


A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss

by Professional_Creeper



Series: A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Casual Sex, Chilton deserves love, Chilton makes dad jokes, Class Differences, Domestic Fluff, Dr. Frederick Chilton Being an Asshole, Dr. Frederick Chilton is Bad at Feelings, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Gender-Neutral Smut, Gender-neutral Reader, Idiots in Love, Injury Recovery, Insecurity, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Office Blow Jobs, Smut, Snarky Reader, snarky Chilton, takes place over seasons 2 and 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25228654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper
Summary: You can’t stand Frederick Chilton, but after he’s tortured and left scarred by a former patient, you are afflicted by an irrepressible desire to get him in bed. Is it just pity, or are you growing feelings for this incompetent sleezebag?
Relationships: Dr. Frederick Chilton/Reader, Dr. Frederick Chilton/You
Series: A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912681
Comments: 44
Kudos: 117





	1. I Wanna Fuck You

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to just jot down a few quick thoughts, but it kept getting longer oops here's a fic
> 
> Reader can be any gender, please let me know if I fuck up on that front

Dr. Frederick Chilton was arrogant and unpleasant.

Everyone thought so, but most would dance around their hostility toward him with subtle digs couched in polite discourse. Not you. You weren’t shy about saying it to his face.

As he exited the courtroom doors, Dr. Chilton saw you waiting in the hall to ambush him, and braced himself for another soapbox diatribe. Such a shame, he thought. He recalled how much he had tried to make a good impression when you first met, but his charm kept backfiring, and now you patently despised him. Failure to curry favor was nothing out of the ordinary, but unfortunately, he still had to deal with you. You were one of Crawford’s lackeys, and had been inescapable since Will Graham’s arrest.

“You conniving, idiotic, condescending weasel!” you exploded upon the man with an expensive suit and gaudy cane. “How could you get on the stand and make that bullshit testimony? You don’t know anything about Will!” You withheld the fuck-you’s that time, out of professional courtesy.

He brushed you off and continued walking briskly down the hall, cane tapping on the polished floor, but you followed and walked alongside him.

“Do I need a restraining order against you?” Dr. Chilton said, bored.

You crossed your arms. “Oh, hah-hah.”

“What is it, then?” he sighed, slowing down. Trying to outpace you was more trouble than it was worth, thanks to the pinching of scar tissue in every stride. “I am extremely busy."

“‘The confused man Will Graham presents to the world could not commit those crimes, because that man is a fiction,’” you quoted his testimony.

“Correct. Is that all?”

“Did you ever consider it’s because he _didn’t_ commit those crimes? You know, being the only one who thinks Will is a psychopath doesn’t make you a genius, it makes you an idiot. Or do you know that, but you’ve just been pining have him locked up so you can study him?”

“Incredible. Mr. Graham has found a truly gullible fool to place under his thumb. I have never met anyone so susceptible to his manipulations. Have you ever been tested for personality disorders?” He regarded you like you were a lab rat with a lot of audacity to be squeaking at him (though to be fair, that was how he looked at almost everybody).

You burned to keep arguing, but he walked down the courthouse steps and got into an obtrusively fancy classic car. Your heart was racing. You weren’t finished with him.

* * *

You seemed to be the only sane person aware that the sweet, empathetic, dog-loving Will Graham was obviously being framed, and did your best to visit him as often as possible at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Unfortunately, that meant dealing with its chief of staff.

Every time you visited Will, you ended up clashing with that pompous buffoon and his perfectly coiffed hair. He was notorious for his unethical practices, but since rich white assholes were incapable of being fired, it was your self-appointed job to protect Will from him.

Though, recently, you had to admit two things.

One: you may have been the tiniest bit biased by your fondness for Will, and two: your feelings toward Dr. Chilton had been softening.

Not long ago, Chilton had barely survived being tortured by a former patient, Abel Gideon. The sight of him on a medical gurney cradling his own internal organs in his arms was a horror that would be burned into your brain for life. He may have been an incompetent jerk whom Gideon had every right to want revenge on, but he didn’t deserve _that_.

You didn’t think he would survive, but in a few weeks, like magic, he was back to play Will’s jailer, a cane in hand but no other sign of the trauma he endured.

Too _little_ sign of the trauma he endured, honestly. After all, he was only hurt because of his own meddling—using psychic driving to convince Gideon he was the Chesapeake Ripper in order to achieve the fame and glory of having treated the Chesapeake Ripper.

But no, he was still bursting full of egotistical remarks and ambition, if a little short on organs.

“I see the experience hasn’t humbled you one bit,” you commented upon his return, when he gloated about the accolades he would receive after writing a book about Will Graham.

“Funny, it almost sounds like you wanted me to be gutted,” he retorted in a pleasantly upbeat voice with a sharp undercurrent.

His rich-boy superiority complex _did_ make it tempting to punch him in the face… but disembowelment was going too far.

Something changed after that. It used to be that you couldn’t wait to get away from him, but now you found yourself wanting to stay and fight longer, your cheeks burning with indignation. Days you weren’t visiting Will, you went to the mental hospital to crusade against Dr. Chilton over ethics and his lack thereof, just for the excuse to see him. 

The two of you exchanged cutting banter the same as always, but you found yourself being more civil... or, at least, your heated arguments felt more playful. Sure, you still called him a dirty slimeball, but now it was a friendly roast and not because you hated his (slightly damaged) guts. 

It was strange. Every time you argued your heart would pound against your chest in anticipation, but you couldn’t figure out why.

Your breaking point came when you barged into his office and discovered him spying on patients’ private conversations with visitors—headphones on, feet up on his desk, holding a Montblanc fountain pen in his mouth and swirling it with his tongue.

He didn’t startle at your unexpected entrance, as a person who feels shame might do when caught in the middle of something so sleazy. He was completely unrepentant about it. Sliding a headphone off one ear and picking up a glass of top-shelf scotch from his desk, he took a slow sip, and smugly asked, “Can I help you?”

What could you say to that? You felt your face heating up, so you turned on your heel without a word, and left. You finally understood what you had been feeling. 

You always took him for a coward—the type who runs crying to mommy the moment his knee gets scraped. But he’d been tortured, brutally, and still wasn’t running away. He got more than what was coming to him, but he didn’t change his manipulative psychiatric practices or grating personality at all.

As infuriating as it was… his resilience was sexy.

Like a switch was flipped, every time you sniped insults at each other, instead of picturing strangling him with his tie, you imagined blindfolding him with it, tying him to a bed and spanking him with his cane. He had the cutest way of shimmying his shoulders when he was trying to be coy about a secret, and that smarmy little crooked smile he made when he thought he was winning used to infuriate you, but now it caused an aching between your thighs. 

After weeks of this, he cornered you in an empty hallway. “Do not think I haven’t noticed you are here far more often than you need to be. You didn’t even talk to Will Graham the last two occasions you paid a visit. What is it, then? What’s your angle? Keeping an eye on me for Crawford?”

“Isn’t it obvious?,” you scoffed. “I want to fuck you.”

“Huh,” he vocalized with detachment.

You’d expected him to be flustered by the bold declaration, or to jump on you immediately. Not to coldly look you up and down like you’d handed him a strange puzzle piece to analyze.

It must have been a long time since he’d been intimate, considering his reputation as a Grade A piece of shit. But apparently he wasn’t that desperate.

To be honest, you weren’t even sure what his orientation was. You may have been completely off base.

“Fascinating, really. For someone who called me… what was it? A ‘morally corrupt assclown,’ you must be in a dire state to consider propositioning me. You know, as a respected psychiatrist, I can recommend some literature on sexual dysfunctions.”

A devious smile spread over his thin lips and you realized if your attraction was one-sided, he held all the cards. You made the mistake of delivering him a massive advantage over you, and you were going to make a fool of yourself. He was _relishing_ the power.

There was still time to backtrack on the vulnerability you’d accidentally exposed while he was still trying to figure out if you were joking. But you were around profilers, psychiatrists, and investigators with hidden agendas all day, and you grew weary of conversations having ten layers of meaning and obfuscation.

The honest truth was, it would be nice to get laid.

“Well? Are you interested or not?” You dropped your voice and stepped closer to him, inches from his face. He smelled so clean, like hospital antiseptic and spicy aftershave. His breath hitched as your leg brushed the inside of his thigh—that’s it, that was the reaction you wanted. “Do you want to fuck me, Dr. Chilton?”

Oh, he _did_.

A barely audible whine rose from the back of his throat, and his hands were around your waist. “I suppose so,” he said, still a little too clinically, though a hard bob of his Adam’s apple betrayed him. His eyes met yours. They were the color of an ocean wave crashing on the beach; an honest, North Atlantic wave that you might find at Chesapeake Bay—not some perfect crystal-blue wave from a tropical paradise. “It couldn’t hurt to let off some steam.”

“Precisely,” you nodded. Just two adults doing the logical thing. That’s right. No squishy vulnerable feelings that could be used against you. Just relieving tension.

He grabbed you by the wrist and dragged you hastily into the nearest unoccupied space. The door to the cramped supply closet clicked shut, and he leered at you with eyes that seemed to glow with hunger in the dark. You felt pleasantly like a small animal trapped with a wolf, about to be devoured. A shiver of anticipation ran down your spine and sent heat rushing between your thighs. Before you knew it you were flipped around with him pressed against your back, pumping into you with muffled groans—as frenzied with desperation as you fantasized he would be—as you braced against a metal shelf crammed with pens and packs of post-it notes.

He was strong. You had expected his suit to hide the flaccid body of a sedentary academic, fragranced of old books, but when he pulled your hips into his your body _moved_.

After finishing inside you with a ragged, tortured breath (barely choking back a too-vulnerable moan), he hastily zipped himself back into his pants and left you to clean yourself up on your own, without so much as a nod to ceremony or pleasantries. That was the end of that, you figured—exactly what you asked for, no more no less. Little did you know, Dr. Chilton had no intention of leaving things off at one quickie in a closet.

Before you left, he pulled you into his office and provoked you with lewd remarks about fucking you on his desk—so you knocked the clutter off it onto the floor to make room. He shrieked like a toddler as his very important papers and very expensive office décor went flying, having neither thought through the actual consequences of desk sex nor expected you to call his bluff. His beautiful seawater eyes went wide as you pushed him back on the broad mahogany surface and climbed on top of him. Then you were riding him, chasing your climax with his well-manicured hands kneading your ass cheeks, pulling you deeper and deeper with each stroke of your hips. And still you wanted more. You wanted to fuck him into next week.

And then you were in his unreasonably lavish home, in his unreasonably, decadently oversized bed, his mouth feverishly working your heat, and you repaying him by making him come over and over until it was torture, until he could no longer hold back the vulnerable, whimpering sobs of pleasure as he fell apart, and he passed out from fatigue. You collapsed next to him on the bed, panting, sweating, and shaking with over-stimulation.

For a moment you considered the snoring body of an unsavory man you had exhausted into submission, lying naked and leaking fluids onto two-thousand-thread-count sheets, and briefly considered calling a cab. Then you went to the bathroom for a towel to wipe him off before curling yourself around him under the covers.

* * *

Morning found you nestling in his soft light brown chest hair, tracing your fingers along the raised red scar that divided a third of his torso like an autopsied cadaver. He flinched a little when you touched it, but remained impassive. A reservoir of sympathy swelled up within you.

“You pity me. That is why you wanted to sleep with me all of a sudden,” he said, deciphering the meaning of your look. “I’m not complaining. Apparently, to be fortunate in bed requires only that one be tragically disfigured. You are drawn to wounded birds.”

The corner of your lip screwed up like you swallowed something bitter. It’s… _probably_ not healthy to desire someone purely out of pity, but he was right. You never felt anything for him until you felt sorry for him. But that wasn’t all there was to your relationship… was it?

“The instinct to nurture and the instinct to hurt are both strong human emotions. They’re primal,” you speculated.

“Trying your hand at psychoanalysis? I would leave it to the professionals, darling.”

“Would you?” You tilted your head innocently. “Then how come you’re still practicing?”

He clutched his chest and feigned being wounded.

Grinning, you buried your face back into his hair. “Arguing with you was always exciting… trying to land a stinging blow. Now I see you hurt, and I feel the need to protect you, too. You tickle my instincts, I suppose. Like cold ice cream on hot pie. What can I say?”

“Hmm, a plausible hypothesis,” he nodded idly at the ceiling, one brow lifted. “I’m not sure that that is any _better_ , but as previously mentioned, your motivations are not of particular interest to me.”

“Charming. Let me phrase it another way, then: You have a very punchable face, but since you’ve already been eviscerated, it takes the fun out of it.”

“Well, and I _was_ going to offer you breakfast…”


	2. The Upper Hand

“You managed to get through the entire conversation without insulting him. I’m impressed,” Jack Crawford smirked as you walked out of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane’s chief of staff’s office. “Has something changed?”

Your spine stiffened and you nearly tripped over the bare tile floor before collecting yourself. “Well, he was unusually cooperative today.” You rubbed the back of your neck, hoping the flush of heat stayed hidden beneath your collar. “You know how he loves making us jump through hoops before letting Will help on cases.” Chilton _had_ been very cooperative, and didn’t even insert any sly insinuations about the fact that you had driven in together that morning—something that Crawford never ever needed to know.

He did, however, keep glancing at you with those dirty ocean-water eyes, and flashing that irritating, smarmy, crooked smile.

“Actually,” you paused mid-step, “you go on ahead. I have a follow-up question. Don’t worry, it’s probably nothing.” You turned back down the hallway toward the heavy oak office doors.

You had to go kiss that smirk off his face.

* * *

Beverly Katz took over your job as champion of Will’s innocence, which you were grateful for, as your attention was wandering and priorities shifting.

You were worried about Will. Not that you believed for a moment he was capable of murdering anyone with his own hands, but when Will suggested that Dr. Chilton be his sole psychiatrist and cut Dr. Lecter off from seeing him, you grew suspicious. If you believed Will Graham about Hannibal Lecter—and you did—then cockblocking Lecter could only have been intended to bring down the Ripper’s wrath on the man standing between them.

Maybe you were reading the situation the wrong way. Maybe Will was only trying to protect himself from Hannibal. But it worried you.

Then Beverly Katz was murdered.

Something profoundly dark took shape inside of Will after that. He wasn’t the same good-hearted dog lover you thought he was. Not anymore. It was strange how entirely your loyalties had flipped in such a short time, but your instincts told you it was dangerous to be Will Graham’s friend.

“Don’t get involved with him. Or Hannibal,” you warned, but Chilton only laughed at you.

* * *

Almost every night, you found yourself sleeping with Frederick Chilton—even when you weren’t _sleeping with_ him.

“It’s because your house is so much nicer than mine,” you told the doctor.

This was the man who convinced Abel Gideon he was the Chesapeake Ripper and got one of his nurses killed. The man who kept flirting with Hannibal Lecter—the real Ripper—over their unorthodox (illegal) therapy techniques.

It was better not to let a man like that gain the upper hand on you by revealing that you enjoyed his company. No, no, you didn’t like _him!_ You liked his expensive imported coffee in the morning, that was all.

The game of emotional chess didn’t suit you well.

Holding back your true emotions was not in your nature. When he pissed you off, you swore and called him an idiot. When he made you weak in the knees, you wanted to fuck him, and flirt with him, and just keep touching him—especially when he responded so adorably to physical affection.

You had been confident he would accept your sexual advances because he didn’t have anyone else he was close to. You hadn’t considered that he must have been extremely _lonely_.

He was the sort of man who sat alone in his empty cavern of an office and pretended he wanted it that way. The sort who thought himself charming, knew that nobody else did, and vacillated between trying harder to be and pushing everyone away. Of course he was desperate for company. 

Not that you pitied him for his loneliness—it was his own smug confidence in his superiority that kept him that way. You once saw him refuse to tip a delivery boy for being late with his sushi, and in the same breath give an incredulous laugh at the suggestion he eat something from the hospital kitchen like the rest of the staff. He constantly dropped esoteric allusions to Hippocrates, Freud, and other classic figures in medicine, and grew visibly upset when they failed to go over your head. (When he succeeded in stumping you, one side of his mouth would twitch up into that smarmy smirk, and he would make a joke at your education's expense.)

His ego must have been intolerable for anyone trying to remain courteous, but every time he lobbed a condescending remark at you, you would spike it back down in his court with gleefully philistine curses. It became your favorite hobby. 

And once you got over the grating ego, there was something so wonderfully tender and unsure about him. 

Just running your fingers through his hair was enough to make him moan, he was so starved. He could be twitchy at first, like a stray dog—if you came up behind him and put your hands on him, he would jump, and if you reached for him without warning he recoiled back.

However, whenever you clumsily dropped something, or were alone in his office wearing an outfit slightly more provocative than was professional, or you ate the last blood orange from his kitchen that he had been saving for breakfast, he would take the opportunity to swat you on the butt, whispering “you are very naughty” into your ear. Spanking became his new favorite comeback to any disagreement in which you get too rude. Call him an idiot, and you could guarantee a clap on the ass would swiftly follow.

Initially, you thought it was juvenile, but for a man who was not practiced at soft, romantic gestures, you realized it was the only excuse he could think of to initiate physical contact.

He loved touching you, and being touched.

When you realized how much he longed for it, you started insulting him just to get him to spank you, so you could turn around under his arm and run your hands up his chest, pressing your hips into his until his ears turned red. You lived to fluster him—that moment when he had no more sassy retorts, because you were _there_ , so close, so tempting that all he wanted was to take you where you stood. The whole spanking pretense began to fall to the wayside as he grew accustomed to you cuddling him at every opportunity, stroking his jawline, kissing his neck, and whispering praises in his ear. Oh, he loved being praised even more than physical affection; he would practically purr when you told him how good his cock made you feel. He thrived on affection, soaking up every drop of it you would offer—and you offered him everything.

He may have been the most bratty, incompetent narcissist to ever be put in charge of a mental institution, but it didn’t take long for him to see through your bluff. The fancy coffee had nothing to do with it.

You cared about him.

This grew even more obvious when the nightmares began.

_The red scar down his soft abdomen starts to leak tiny beads of blood. They grow bigger, and redder. The wound is bleeding now, fresh. You touch it and realize you’ve accidentally torn all the stitches out. There is nothing holding him together anymore, and his chest gapes open—you try to push it back together with your hands, but as you put pressure on the wound, organs start to squeeze out like an overfilled tub of strawberry jam. You scream for help, but you’re in the middle of the forest and no one is around for miles. Everything is slippery and wet with blood, and you can’t get his entrails back inside of him no matter how you scream. _His eyes cloud over, dull and far away. He’s going to die and everything you do just makes it worse.__

When your eyes shot open, all you could see were hazy silhouettes. The velvety blankets and quiet whoosh of a ceiling fan told you were in a dark, elegant bedroom. Chilton’s breath was coming in hard, ragged bursts. Reflections in the moonlight revealed his skin was beaded with sweat, and his pale hands groped at his scar, checking it over as if you’d been having the same dream. Only when he was certain he was still intact did his breathing slow, and he became aware of you watching him. His dark eyes darted nervously over to you.

Swallowing the dryness in his throat, he turned his face blankly up to the ceiling, pride damaged.

Without a word, you curled an arm around him and pulled yourself close along the length of his tensed body. He allowed this. Nuzzling into his shoulder, you ran your fingers idly through his dense brown hair, provoking a muted sigh. Did he think you would tease him? You were scared, too, and you weren’t the one it had happened to. Your heart twisted in your throat. How long had he been waking up in terror, alone? Reluctantly, he settled into your embrace, and soon returned to sleep.

In the morning, your normal breakfast routine of pilfering all his snacks before he woke up and cooked something for you was overshadowed by an uncomfortable silence.

“Look who’s finally awake,” you teased, but he didn’t return with a typically sassy remark. He was quiet. Cautious. It was like he was waiting for something to happen. “You OK?” you eventually asked.

“Fine,” he replied, worryingly.

As the minutes ticked by and he threw various fruits and greens into the blender for a smoothie, he started to return to his normal self, as whatever he was waiting for continued to not happen.

“Are you putting kale in that? I’m not going to drink it if there’s kale,” you stuck out your tongue and scrunched your face.

“It’s not _for_ you. Get your own breakfast, you little urchin!”

His voice lilted into a higher pitch meant to convey annoyance in a way you had come to find rather cute, and you smiled to yourself that he was back.

You would realize later that he was terrified you would use his embarrassing display of weakness to get under his skin. There were dozens of patients at the institution (not to mention employees) who would love to know that the autocratic Frederick Chilton has nightmares. It seemed the natural thing to hold over his head. Even just mentioning it in passing would have been abjectly humiliating, and you were always so keen on teasing him—but not about this.

You didn’t say anything about it, to him or to anyone. Unless he wanted to talk about it, you never would.

Trust was not something that came naturally to Frederick Chilton, but that morning, for the first time, he considered the possibility that for some strange reason, you weren’t going to betray him.


	3. Dead

“Do not come over tonight,” he said. Even through the bad cell phone connection, you could tell he was nervous, and it made you nervous.

“What’s the matter?”

“Or tomorrow night,” he continued. “Or ever. Stay away.”

“What?” Your heart sank. “What are you saying? I thought things were going well…”

“Only for the time being. You may have been right,” his voice cracked ever-so-slightly. You knew it pained him to admit that, and the fact that he did made your blood go cold. “The Chesapeake Ripper... may be planning to kill me. There is no reason for you to be there when it happens.”

_Shit._

You worried when he started to believe Will Graham—ironically, the very thing you had wanted to begin with, but Will had changed, and you couldn't help suspect he was trying to get revenge on Chilton by roping him into investigating Hannibal Lecter. You were certain he at least didn’t _care_ if Chilton was killed when Will started dangling fame and glory in front of his nose.

Chilton was too ambitious to resist the promise of fame and glory, and was the kind of fool to go poking his nose where it didn’t belong.

“Fuck that, I’m coming over. If we’re together, I can protect you.”

“Don’t. I am going to try to... Wait,” he paused, marveling, “you would do that for me?” His resolve firmed again, “Do not come. Please. Look, there is nothing connecting us except sex—good sex, mind you, but—you may not be on the Ripper’s radar. If you are close to me when he comes, he will only kill you, too. It’s not worth it. I do not want you caught up in this. Take the advice I should have: do not get involved.”

There was a click, and the call went dead.

You felt gutted.

* * *

Frederick was the kind of man who spent all his nights and weekends alone, until you. It was pathetic to think you were his most stable relationship—not just currently, but of his entire life—when he had only known you for a few months.

That was not to say he was inexperienced.

He had fumbled with plenty of bras as a young legacy in a Harvard fraternity, and with fraternity brothers in dark closets, mostly under the influence of cheap alcohol (bought ironically, of course).

He dated in medical school, but there wasn’t much time for relationships when he was constantly studying twice as hard as everyone else just to stay in the middle of the class rankings instead of sinking to the bottom. Besides, in academia there was a full menu of up-and-coming doctors to choose from, and he was never found to be the most appetizing selection. Too bitter.

Family money opened all the right doors for him after graduating and starting his own practice. There, he could sit on top of his own throne without all the competition. Wealth and power finally made him a prime cut to the type who wanted to marry an important doctor, and the nurses and secretaries fell at his feet.

Unfortunately the type of person who, first and foremost, wanted an _important doctor_ , was not interested in an emotional relationship—at least, the money came first.

Some sought the full package of money _and_ romance, but those he always chased away after one or two dates. He found that anyone willing to tolerate his personality defects was the type to borrow his credit cards, ply him for gifts, demand a promotion, ignore him or cheat the moment he wasn’t buying something, and ultimately blackmail him for one final payout when even the money and status weren’t enough to tolerate being with him any longer.

It was fine, he told himself. He used them and they used him—it was how the game was played.

Then there was _you_.

Frederick Chilton always found you arrogant and unpleasant. He was an expert in his field, a respected psychiatrist who had discovered _the_ Chesapeake Ripper in his facility, and you spoke to him as if he were a child!

(Well, assuming you swore so much at children. He wouldn’t know. children are filthy.)

Whenever he saw you entering his hospital, he knew he would need an extra glass of scotch to recover. You were fierce, never making a single effort to mask your intentions, whether it was tearing into him for ( _allegedly_ ) unethical practices, or failing completely to mask your sexual attraction to him.

It had been a long time since anybody made a pass at him. Running an institution for the criminally insane was not widely considered sexy, and made his doctor-husband stock plummet—a fact for which he was grateful. Romance was hardly worth the exhaustion, and he would rather be alone than pretend.

He should have shot you down. It would have delightfully changed the power dynamic—any time you insulted his methods, he could remind you of your embarrassing plea for his attention.

But in truth, he enjoyed sparring with you. The days you didn’t come rattle your sword at him were dull. Nobody else spoke to him so brazenly, even though many certainly shared your opinion. It was refreshing.

He’d been imagining ripping your clothes off for weeks.

This would be a one-time thing, he thought: another case of using and being used. A little fun to help him regain confidence after his thoracic cavity was ripped open. He assumed you would call a taxi when it was over, but when he woke up in the morning your arms were wrapped around him with the sweetest smile on your lips. It was odd. It sort of made his chest ache even though he was sure he liked it.

This must have been what pity sex was like. Ah, the advantages of a cane!

Stranger still, you kept coming back to see him. A one-night stand turned into two, turned into three, until it became a habit—and you spent additional time with him for no particular reason he could discern. The sex was great, but fucking did not require staying the entire night to cuddle. When he was too busy working late to stop for dinner, much less for a sexual escapade, you showed up anyway, surprising him with a bag of fast food. It was greasy and barely edible, but thoughtful. You read a book in one of his leather chairs and ate all his fries while he typed reports into the night.

Surely you had other partners to choose from who would have been more entertaining. Your behavior was quite abnormal.

He knew you had an angle, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Breakfast, maybe?

The fact that he made you eggs and gourmet coffee didn’t seem enough to account for your always choosing to spend time with him. You said his house was nice, but even that wasn't enough. The equation was unbalanced. He never paid you, and you never demanded gifts—even when he offered them, you flatly refused. You would not let him so much as replace your cracked cellphone screen. You had always been so vehemently insistent about Will Graham’s innocence, but since you started sleeping with him you’d never asked for any favors, like moving Graham to a nicer cell or falsifying a psych evaluation.

He’d even had a full-blown panic attack in front of you. Something you could have used as leverage to threaten his very career. But you didn’t.

If you were ingratiating yourself with him for an ulterior motive, you were terrible at it.

Honestly, _terrible_. He wanted to give you pointers, but it would spoil the game. Unless—he considered the terribly disconcerting possibility—there _was_ no game. You weren’t using him, you just had feelings for him. Real ones. It made him feel strange and off balance—if there was nothing transactional about the relationship, it was not something he could control. The thought disturbed him so much he nearly called the whole thing off, but something stopped him from picking up the phone. There was a squirming in his gut, and he didn’t like it. 

What did you possibly want from him? What reason did you have to care?

Was it pity?

Pity was the only answer that made sense. Pity made you want to protect him; you had said as much on that first morning. It explained your change from hostility to affection (usually it went the other way around), and why he hadn’t driven you away by now.

It was nice, he thought. He rather liked your pity.

He would have been happy basking in it for a long time, but… he made an error in judgment.

Chilton knew he had fucked up. The Ripper case had seemed so academic, something to analyze from the box seats, but he now found himself pulled onstage for a death scene he hadn't rehearsed. He was so drawn in by Hannibal Lecter, trying to be his friend—trying to be like him—and all the while whispering sensitive information right into the Chesapeake Ripper’s ear. Then he had to go and listen to Will Graham, to show Jack Crawford that tape with evidence that seemed so solid at the time. But he was played. Hannibal knew he knew, and Chilton was the Judas who tried to sell him out.

He was dead meat. Literally.

 _He_ was dead, but you—you had believed Graham from the start, and stayed far away from Dr. Lecter. He could keep you safe. Out of the line of fire. As he felt his options slipping away, he desperately wanted to turn to you. You were the only one he trusted, and with the instinct of a drowning man he sought for anything to cling to. But he knew what happened when the drowning cling. 

He was dead, but you didn’t have to go down with him. The time you had spent together recently had been nice, and the twisting in his gut insisted that he owed you that much for giving him so much of your time. This was the right reason to call things off. One selfless deed could not make up for a life of misfortune, but if he could save you from sharing his fate, then dying would not be the worst thing that could happen.

* * *

“ _Him?_ How can you honestly believe _Frederick Chilton_ is capable of being a serial killer?!” you screamed in Jack Crawford’s face after he arrested the shaken psychiatrist. Since learning what had happened, you were… upset. “Are you _stupid?_ He’s being framed, just like Will! That man does not have the constitution to make dioramas out of murdered bodies—he’s an anxious nerd who can’t even drink coffee unless it has been first digested by a civet!”

“Watch it, or I'm sending you home,” Crawford warned as the federal agent who would tolerate no disrespect, especially in the middle of an FBI field office. As Crawford the sensitive father figure, the edges of his hard stare softened with sympathy, and he pat you consolingly on the arm.

“At least let me see him!”

Crawford did his best to calm you down, reassuring you that Chilton would be investigated fairly using all the resources of his task force. So you tried to relax as the doctor was handcuffed and dragged into the bowels of the field office to be interrogated. Crawford guided his old protégé, Miriam Lass, into the observation room to confirm whether Dr. Chilton was in fact the Chesapeake Ripper who had held her hostage for three years, while you paced impatiently outside. 

There came a loud bang.


	4. Red

All you could see was red. It boiled in your veins, it choked your thoughts, and gripped your throat with its skeletal fingers as you tried to sleep at night. It made your hands shake. Your world was swallowed whole by the pigment of blood and you could not escape.

It shouldn’t have been possible to hurt this much. He wasn’t supposed to _mean_ that much to you.

But he did.

He did and you knew it, but admitting it would have given him too much power. You still weren’t even sure why he was stuck so deeply in your heart—he was rude, spoiled, and an idiot, somehow both over- and under-confident at the same time, always grating on the wrong people’s nerves. But under all the posturing, there was something soft you wanted to protect at all costs, something you had barely glimpsed and could only infer its shape by the outline of the walls he built around it.

You could never get him out of your head, no matter the time of day or how you distracted yourself. His pull only quieted when you were in the same room, and now that he was gone, he was cannon fire booming ceaselessly through every chamber of your memory. A deafening reverberation of regret. At the end of each day you just wanted to find yourself back in his arms again. He must have known how you felt. But you never told him. You never said it out loud.

He was never supposed to be this important to you. It was just sex.

It shouldn’t hurt this much.

You shouldn’t have been this angry.

For a week or two, you hid it well. The last thing Chilton said to you was don’t get involved. He wanted you to survive, and you wanted honor his last wishes and not die. But the red followed and you could not shake it.

You were the only one mourning for him; there didn't even seem to be a funeral. It was as if he just disappeared and nobody cared. Except you. The world moved on, and everything went back to normal. Nobody faced any consequences for what they did to him. 

Chilton had gone to Will for help, and Will called Crawford to arrest him. Crawford was stupid enough to believe another of Hannibal’s frame jobs, stupid enough to let Miriam Lass grab the gun from his holster and fire. Your blood boiled red every time you saw them, and you struggled to contain your fury. But there was only one man who was really to blame. The Chesapeake Ripper. The one who had manipulated the whole situation to make Dr. Chilton take the fall for his crimes and then be swept six feet under.

Hannibal Lecter was still assisting on cases with Jack Crawford, and every time you saw him free, your blood boiled hotter, and hotter, until you came to the only resolution that allowed you to breathe: you were going to kill him.

You should have gone to Chilton’s house the moment you knew he was in trouble, stayed by his side, and fought. You were a coward. You didn’t protect the man you… the man you were sleeping with. The man you promised to protect.

Chilton was dead, and you knew who was responsible. Nobody was doing a thing about it, but _you_ could—like you should have done in the first place.

Hannibal wouldn’t see it coming if you simply walked into his office with a gun and shot him point-blank in the face. You would go to jail, but the problem would be solved. Just like that.

It was smart for anyone involved with FBI investigations, even as a consultant, to own a gun, and so you did, though you’d never used it. You got it out of its safe, and looked at it. It was terrifyingly heavy in your hand. Then you put it back and locked it. Tomorrow.

The plan fermented for what felt like months of sleepless nights, ruminating on just how you would do it, and building up your resolve. Every time you thought, _today!_ you found a reason to put it off. You took the gun out and cleaned it, then put it back. You avoided Hannibal—avoided _everyone_ —because the murderous look in your eyes would be too clear, and you didn’t know who to trust—even Will Graham, who should have been your ally in revenge, seemed to be cozying up to Lecter in a creepy way.

You took the gun out.

It was Valentine’s Day. Romantic movies marathoned mockingly on your TV set, and red hearts and roses flooded the stores and streets as couples held hands in the snow.

_Today._

This time you meant it. This time you wouldn’t be a coward.

What were you doing?

Hannibal’s office loomed above you, and you circled the block again. It was suddenly too real. You couldn't kill a person! You didn't want to die! What if you were wrong? What if Will was wrong and you were gullible to believe him and you would be killing an innocent man? _No. You’re going to be strong. You can do it._

You took a resolute step up the short stone staircase to the entrance landing. The office was a brick Victorian building in the historic district, next to an old stone cathedral, which gave the whole location a flare of drama. You stepped into the foyer, the ancient wood floors creaking beneath you. You wouldn’t be able to sneak up on anyone in this place, but that wasn’t the plan. He would think you were just here to talk to him.

 _“Don’t.”_ The man’s voice so close in your ear made you jump with a startled yelp.

“You’re not a killer,” he whispered. “Even now with that gun in your pocket, you’re undecided. But Hannibal won’t be.”

“Will.”

Emergency lights flashed _Danger! Danger!_ in your head, even as you breathed a sigh of relief that it was him.

“I thought you wanted to stay away from Hannibal Lecter. You were supposed to be the smart one,” he chuckled morbidly. “Though I understand your impulse,” he said, reassuring you that he was here as your friend, not the Ripper’s date. “He killed your lover. Hannibal made it happen as surely as he pulled the trigger himself.”

You stiffened and blushed, but what was the point in stammering out denials? Of course Will would know. Will knew everything. That beautiful brain freak.

“Was it that obvious?” you groaned.

“I don’t think Crawford knows.”

Your lower jaw trembled, teeth chattering together as your knees suddenly went weak. You were finished. You took your hand off the gun and rubbed your eyes with your sleeve to hide the redness. “If you know, then Hannibal must know too,” you grit your teeth to keep your voice steady. “I thought I could just... get the drop on him…”

“I’m going to catch him,” Will stated as a fact.

“Are you?”

He didn’t answer. Something had changed in Will. Part of him was still that innocent puppy who had been your friend, who had made you jealous of his unwavering gaze for Alana, and you hoped that part would win in the end.

“Is Hannibal going to kill me?”

“Don’t give him a reason to,” Will warned with a sort of shrug that was more in his face than his shoulders. He would have told you if you were in immediate danger. You had trusted him when no one else would, and that still bought you some favor, whatever dark place he was in. If he told you trying to kill Hannibal now would only lead to your death, you had to believe him.

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“What does anyone do? Grieve? Keep going? I promise I will catch him. Don’t do anything rash to get in the way.” With that, he brushed you off and went up to Hannibal’s office for therapy.

A shiver ran up your spine. You turned, and didn’t stop walking until you were home.

It was a miracle Hannibal didn’t kill you. In hindsight, he probably predicted your vengeance plan as well as its outcome from the start, and preferred to watch you suffering in impotent rage.

* * *

Crawford pulled you aside, arms crossed, shrugging into the raised lapel of his wool coat against the cold Maryland breeze.

“You need to calm down.”

“I can’t.” Everything was red. “You’re not doing anything about Hannibal, and he _murdered_ Beverly! He murdered… he…”

Crawford could be dense at times, but he was still an FBI agent. The clandestine relationship you had with Frederick Chilton had not, in fact, escaped his notice—at least it became painfully clear when Chilton was shot in the face, and you melted down and became as obsessed with Hannibal Lecter as Will. The people Crawford worked with made his job so fun, sometimes. So fun. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Come with me.”

You climbed into Crawford’s car, and were surprised when he kept driving for two hours. It was starting to feel like a kidnapping. In a different city, he pulled up in front of an extravagantly baroque beachfront hotel and medical spa. It reminded you of those addiction treatment resorts where rich people go when they spend too much of their yacht money on cocaine.

“It is critical to the investigation that this remain secret, but hopefully seeing this will help you get your head back on straight. I need you thinking.”

A glass elevator brought you up to a suite on the 23rd floor. Jack knocked three times on the door, then crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall. “I’ll wait outside,” he said.

Paranoid bolts and locks slid and clicked open one by one, and the door tentatively opened a crack at a time, until a familiar eye and fluffy brown hair neatly styled back appeared in the opening. It took a moment for your brain to believe what your eyes were seeing, but there was no mistake.

Your heart cracked open and rainbows spilled out.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch!” Chilton squealed as you launched yourself into his arms, nearly knocking him off his feet, heedless of the fact that he was probably still injured. His cane went clattering across the hardwood floor.

“You’re alive,” you said. “You’re alive!”

“I am.” Anything sarcastic or clever he meant to say was lost to the smile tugging on his lips, and his hands finding their way around your back, pressing your body against his. An ache he had mistaken for the background misery of his life was soothed, filled like an empty crater.

He was surprised how genuinely happy he was to see you again.

“You’re alive.”

“You’re alive” was all you could manage to repeat like a poorly-programmed robot as you stared at his face, his suit, his posture—it was really him?—as you patted the sides of his face up and down making sure he was corporeal. It was impossible! There was a red scar where the bullet had entered his left cheek, but otherwise he was perfectly fine. You glanced around the room—a spacious luxury suite with leather furniture, an enormous bed, and a panoramic view of the skyline and ocean as purple dusk settled across it. He was the only person you knew who would stay in a place as ostentatious as this.

He was alive all right.

“But you were...”

“You always said my face was ‘punchable.’ Apparently it is also shootable,” he said dryly.

A bark of laughter sprang from your throat. You snaked your hands around the back of his head and purred, “I can think of better things to do with your face...”

Your lips met his in a clash of pent up longing. You wanted to kiss him until the pain of separation was gone forever, until you filled yourself up with so much of him that you would never miss him again. He gasped into your mouth, fingers curling up the back of your neck, through your hair, guiding you to the bed.

Falling on top of him, you pushed him down onto the mattress, lips never leaving the salt of his skin. He smelled like spicy cologne, but his antiseptic hospital smell had worn off. His hands were already busy trying to find their way underneath the hem of your shirt.

“Wait a minute—you let me think you were dead, asshole!”

* * *

He explained the situation while you sat on the large hotel bed in disbelief. Jack Crawford was not ignoring Hannibal Lecter. There was a plan to catch him, but it was dangerous, and worked better if Lecter believed _his_ plan for Chilton to take the blame for the Ripper murders and die was successful.

Chilton was also keen to remain “dead” until Lecter was apprehended, as there was a distinct possibility he might otherwise return to finish the job.

You could understand the need for secrecy, but the fact that you were left out of the plan? You shook your head, clearing away thoughts of rejection. Chilton had been in a coma for a long time, so the initial decision not to inform you wasn’t his, and it wasn’t as though you would have had visitation privileges in the hospital. You weren’t a relative or spouse. You were just his fuck buddy.

It felt as though there was yet another reason he waited until now to let you see him, but you couldn’t place it.

“To be honest,” he added, with a sheepish side-glance, “I didn’t think you would take it so hard.”

* * *

When Jack rapped on the door to signal that it was time to go back home, Frederick lingered with you by the doorway. With a hand on your cheek, his eyes locked on yours, and he instructed gently and firmly, “Do not let Hannibal Lecter kill you.”

“I’ll try.” You cupped his hand under yours, and turned into it, kissing his palm. There was something else important, before you left, “Hey, one more thing. I…” _The last time we saw each other, I was pretending that I didn’t care as much as I do. I never got to tell you that I love you,_ you thought. But you could never tell him that. You weren’t even sure if you were dating. “I missed you.”

You wrapped your arms around him and drew him into a hug. He held you so dearly, leaning his head into the crook of your neck and just breathing.

_“Frederick…”_

The moment that name tumbled so casually out of your lips, a sigh into his collar, the floor dropped from beneath him and he was falling from a moving airplane toward something deadly or wonderful, or perhaps both.

When your relationship had been strictly professional (and adversarial) you called him by his last name, and the habit hadn’t changed. It was what you were accustomed to calling him.

He never liked being called by his first name, in fact. He preferred _Doctor_ Chilton. He had worked hard to earn that title and the respect it came with. “Frederick” was weak, and the only people who used it did so to demonstrate their lack of deference.

But when you said it, its meaning changed.

His feet couldn't find purchase on solid ground, so he held on to you harder, like his life depended on it.

He looked frightened, reluctant to let you go as you pulled back from the hug. If things went wrong you could end up in Lecter’s refrigerator, so you understood why. “Hey, you know, maybe it would be safer if I stayed here… with you,” you offered meekly.

The well-dressed man stepped back suddenly, stiffening. “You-you can’t stay here—there, there are rules: suites are for patients only,” he backed away and paced nervously as he explained. Then he turned on his heel just as quickly back to you, “But maybe you shouldn’t go back until this over. I can pay for a room at a different hotel, without the fussy restrictions…”

“No, no, never mind,” you hushed him with a tense not-laugh. It was unclear why he was so panicked about you staying, but he _was_ recently shot in the face, so you would give him as much space as he needed.

“It was a silly idea, anyway. I have work. Thank you for the thought.” You pulled him into a goodbye kiss, and went for the door. Before turning the handle, however, you turned around one last time, a broad grin across your face, and practically tackled him into an embrace.

He could tell by your sappy expression what you were about to blurt out.

“Do not say it...”

“You’re _alive!_ ” you cheered, and the world felt alive again, too.


	5. Dysmorphophilia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are getting smutty around here!

After Hannibal fled, leaving a bloodbath in his wake, Dr. Frederick Chilton returned to the land of the living and to administrating his psychiatric hospital as if he had simply been away on vacation.

Likewise, your relationship resumed where it had left off. You thought things would be different now—that you would be more honest with your feelings, and he might open up, too—but nothing changed, except for the things that changed in a direction you didn’t like.

“Oh, Doctor Chilton, I need help,” you purred, leaning seductively against the doorway of his office. He sat up rigidly in his leather chair and stammered a greeting with failed nonchalance.

Since his return, his voice shot up an octave whenever you walked in the room. He was like a shy teenager with his first crush, and you could only assume he was re-learning how to exist in the world after trauma. What else would it be?

Slinking up to his desk, you unfastened the top buttons of your shirt. He swallowed, hungry, but not immediately pouncing upon you with a lewd promise growled in your ear and a firm grasp on your hip like he used to do. New reserves of insecurity crouched beneath his skin like lions hidden in tall grass. It broke your heart to see that timidity in his eyes, but it was all incentive for you to work harder to relax him.

“I’m afraid I don’t have insurance, doctor,” you pouted, pushing aside a stack of papers to sit on his desk. “And mental health care is prohibitively costly because of a broken for-profit system, leaving the most _vulnerable_ populations without access…” you put an emphasis on vulnerable, biting your lip.

He quirked a brow. “Your sexy-talk needs work.” 

“Oh, _doctor,_ ” you moaned, sliding off the desk and straddling his lap to pull at his tie. “Until we get universal healthcare…” You brought the end of his orange tie up to your mouth and bit it, gazing coquettishly into his eyes. “Surely there’shh some other way I can pay you…” you lisped, mouth stuffed full of tie. 

He never knew it was possible to laugh, be annoyed, and aroused at the same time, but you were always teaching him new things. 

“That would be a severe ethics violation,” he said sternly, brows lowered, but clearly teasing. You snorted. 

It was impossible to remain self-conscious around someone flirting so badly. His hesitation was gone as he turned your role-play around on you, so you moved on to phase two. Sinking to your knees at the foot of his chair, half under his desk, you smoothed the fabric of his pants over his lap, rubbing his inner thighs to coax his legs open and position yourself between them.

He drew in a sharp breath, but disguised it as a gasp of offense. “This is highly inappropriate. I am going to have to ask you to leave my office. Future visits will be attended by a nurse to ensure proper conduct, or I can refer you to another psychiatrist,” he said in a dry monotone, fully committed to playing hard-to-get. You growled in annoyance at him in between bursts of laughter. He patted your head patronizingly. “Now, now, I am a magnanimous doctor. I am not angry with you as a patient for this behavioral outburst… just disappointed.”

You licked your lips. Challenge accepted. You ran your hands over the front of his dress pants until you found the outline of his cock, and stroked it through the fabric, arching your back while giving him your best please-fuck-me look. He swallowed.

Unzipping the fly, you reached into the warmth of his pants, searching through a bed of curled hairs until you found his cock and drew it out to admire. The skin was velvety and soft, pulsing with heat as you gave it a few slow strokes, watching it grow larger and more firm. You loved it at its full arousal, when it took its sculptural form and shape with veins running up the underside of the shaft, when the foreskin pulled back and the domed pink head stood out, ready to plunge itself into you. 

God, you loved his cock. 

“On the other hand,” he quickly changed his mind, “perhaps I require a demonstration of this ‘alternative payment.’ For the sake of due diligence.” 

Your brought your tongue to its head and gave a teasing lick, tasting the salt of his precum, then kissed it like you would kiss his lips. You pecked a series of kisses down the length of his shaft until you were buried in his neatly trimmed curls, lips brushing the wrinkled skin of his balls, then flattened your tongue against his cock and traced a torturously slow wet line from the base to the tip. 

“I confess... you are my most attractive patient,” he said in a shaky, staggering breath, one side of his lips quirking upward. His chest was rising and falling rapidly now. He wanted more. “That is very good.” Not content with you stopping to look up at him, his hand cradled the back of your head, pushing you down and urging you to continue. “But I will need more payment than that.” 

Taking his entire thick cock in your mouth, you slid down it until he hit the back of your throat and you gagged, eyes watering a little as you adjusted to having your throat stuffed full of him, jaw forced open wide. His manicured fingers curled into your hair, gently petting you. “Easy,” he soothed. 

It was nice sucking the dick of someone as fastidiously clean as Frederick Chilton. You always appreciated that as you began, moving slowly up his shaft until your lips were only closed around the swollen head, licking it gently, then faster until you felt his fingers tighten. He always tasted faintly of soap and very little else. His sedentary lifestyle helped as well; he was never running around and building up a nasty sweat. It was a pleasant little bonus to the whole affair. His cock was the most delicious you’d ever had.

Your head bobbed up and down in his lap with renewed vigor, building a rhythm with his hand gently guiding you to his preference (which you followed to please him, and deviated from to get a reaction). You loved watching his face—his breathing as he struggled to control it, the way his mouth twitched, and his eyes watched you work. That desperate little whine in his throat when you broke his rhythm, which grew into a low moan he tried to suppress when you started a new one.

He gave you instructions: _slower, faster, use your tongue... just like that. Good._ You twisted, and sucked, and pumped his base with your hands, gliding your tongue along the underside of his cock until the exquisite moment when he broke down, and stopped trying to keep his breathing (and noises) under control. By the end, he was a shaking mess mess, barely able to stammer out “k-keep going!” You loved to watch the moment he surrendered to you completely, his fingers digging into your scalp as his hips jerked helplessly, and his mouth falling open as he released into you, moaning and gasping so loudly the staff were sure to hear. 

You kept him buried in your mouth as his hot seed spilled on your tongue, swallowing every drop until his muscles stopped their convulsions, and you licked his cockhead clean. Cleaning up was a pain in the ass otherwise (and Frederick might implode if any got on his dress pants), but also, his largely vegetarian diet made him taste exceptionally sweet. You smiled up at him and ran your tongue over your lips as he panted, a sheen of sweat on his brow. 

As he was coming down, the phone on his desk rang, and naturally, the ambitious jerk answered it without so much as a thank you, or even putting his dick away. Orgasm complete: never mind you, back to work. Based on his half of the conversation, it sounded important—something about a publishing deal for a book he writing on _Hannibal the Cannibal_. The tone of his voice took on that haughty smarter-than-you air as the topic turned to intellectual property rights, and he was clearly driving for more money. So you started sucking his overstimulated dick. He gasped loudly into the receiver, and stared down at you in horror as he tried to cover for it. “I apologize. A bee got into my office, and I have to swat it.” He pushed you off his lap, eyes sparking like choppy waves on a windy sea.

“That was rude,” he growled when he got off the phone, a somewhat deranged smile slanting up one side of his face. He bent you over the desk and slapped your ass, whispering promises into your ear of how he would pay you back later.

You knew he would keep his promises. Each one. He had a lot more aggression to work out lately, and while you weren’t its target, a good hard fuck always made him feel better. You knew when you went to his house tonight you were guaranteed to have a lot of fun in a lot of positions—but you also knew when you were done, he would usher you out with some excuse for why you could’t stay.

That was the biggest, and worst, change. You thought the incident would bring you closer, but he hadn’t let you spend one night with him since the day he was shot.

It made you feel cheap.

Worse, it meant you were drifting apart. He used to be grateful (though he would never admit it) that you were there for the nightmares. When he woke up shaking he would turn to hold you, crushing you against his chest until the shaking stopped, and he drifted back to sleep still holding you tight. You would have thought he would need you there more than ever, now. Something made him stop trusting you.

* * *

“Did I do something wrong?”

You were in the cramped passenger seat of his midlife-crisis Porsche cabriolet as he drove you home yet again, and a silence had fallen over him. It was a warm spring night with beautiful stars in the breeze above you glowing their brightest, albeit faded amid the glow of Baltimore’s city lights.

“Not at all. I am simply setting healthy boundaries, darling. I begin to suspect you only like me for the amenities.”

His house was new—he did not want to move back into the place he had found Abel Gideon dissected, and Hannibal had slaughtered and arranged two FBI agents for display—and even more grandiose than the last. All of the staircases were spiral for some unfathomable reason (because it was fancier), and it contained an entire gym, pool, gourmet kitchen, and a television the size of an actual movie theater screen. The bath had hot-tub jets.

Admittedly, it was nice staying there. It made you feel like someone who’d seen the inside of a country club. But his answer was complete bullshit.

“You know I don’t care about all your fancy crap,” you groaned. 

“Do I? You told me you only stayed the night because my house was nice, and you enjoyed my coffee.”

Ouch. OK. Called out. “Obviously I was lying! I only like your stuff because it’s part of who you are—I can’t imagine you _not_ being shamelessly bourgeoisie—not because I want a sugar daddy. If that’s what you’re worried about… why don’t we stay at my apartment?”

The thought never crossed his mind that you might call his bluff. He was horror-stricken.

“At your little… _chalet?_ ” he said like he was poking a dead bug with the end of a stick.

“It’s an apartment.”

Trapped by his own logic, instead of dropping you at your front door, Frederick got out and hobbled up the narrow staircase with you.

“My god, what is this? For ants?”

“It’s called a full bed, Frederick, and there’s plenty of room,” you answered with a little annoyance creeping into your voice. You knew he was prissy, but from the moment he set foot in your two-bedroom (which you could barely afford) he had been acting like he was in a decrepit slum. It was hilarious, actually, how living like a normal human being made him squirm.

He flopped down into the middle of the mattress, a sullen expression on his face like a toddler in a time-out. “You cannot expect me to sleep on this prison cot.”

“Move over,” you nudged him, crawling onto the covers beside him. “There’s plenty of room if we cuddle.”

He didn’t look interested in cuddling at the moment, however. He stared up at the ceiling like he was about to explode. You smiled. Even at his bitchiest and sulkiest, there was no one else you would rather spend time with. He tugged at your heartstrings. You admired his profile—his square brow that could express so much emotion (right now: petulance), the new scar on his cheek that was clearly the source of some embarrassment to him (though you thought it looked rugged), the stubble down his jaw with the slightest hint of grey. He was just so handsome. 

Seeing his scar this close up was rare, as he always tried to keep you on his right side whenever you were seated or laying next to each other. You rested your chin on your arm and smiled at him, but he didn't smile back, or even glance over. He just stared at the ceiling like you weren’t even there. You waggled your eyebrows suggestively, hoping to get a laugh (or an irate glare that was secretly a laugh).

No response at all. He was moody.

You rolled on your side to cuddle him, intent on kissing that scar, but when your hands touched his chest, he flinched, recoiling with a surprised yelp.

That was the last straw. His nostrils flared and eyes widened as if this was the gravest indignity he had ever suffered. He jumped up from the bed frantically saying, “I have to go.”

And he did. Just like that.

You tried not to cry. _He was being a jerk. He was going through post-traumatic stress. He just needed space, and it wasn’t your fault,_ you said, but you counted up all of the ways it was your fault anyway.

You were always so blunt and rude with him. As much as he deserved it when he was being officious, exploitative, surly, or generally the poster child for “check your privilege,” he probably didn’t want to be around someone who called him out all the time. It was a miracle he tolerated you at all. You’d gone easier on him since he returned from the dead, but maybe he simply didn’t want a rude fuckbuddy anymore.

You decided you wouldn’t bother him. He needed space, and you constantly showing up at his office and calling his house wasn’t helping, and it obviously wasn’t what he wanted.

Not three days went by before he called wondering where you had been. You could hear him trying to hide the worry in his voice, and the relief when you told him you were fine, and not angry. He wanted to see you. Not just the usual tryst, either: he wanted to take you out for dinner.

You had no idea what was going on.

* * *

Chilton was terrified when you stopped calling him. His greatest fear hit him deeper than a scalpel—that you were dead. Hannibal was back from wherever it was he went, and he was killing off everyone close to his enemies. Or any other of hundreds of killers. When it was clear that nothing horrible had happened to you, and you were, in fact, alive, he realized his second greatest fear—he had fucked up and finally driven you away.

A few of his exes used to give him the cold shoulder when he had committed some error, like failing to spoil them with gifts or expensive dinners, or pretending to forget their name. Maybe you, too, were punishing him, and he still had a chance to win you back. It seemed very likely that you wanted more from him than just sex. He had been selfish and unreciprocal with you—though outwardly, you never asked for anything else, except to stay the night. But he could never do that, not anymore.

Instead, pampering you at a Michelin-star restaurant seemed like a good start.

* * *

Dinner with Chilton that night made it clear why you had never gone out on a proper date with him before. His world was _not_ your world.

As you walked in, you were fairly sure the maître d' glared at you for wearing what you considered your nicest outfit—but given that your typical dinner was boxed mac n’ cheese in your underwear, your best may not have been up to standard.

Frederick was at the bar waiting for you, severely out-dressing you in a formal black suit and dazzlingly contrasting tie, but didn’t make any underhanded comments on your attire. He crossed the room to meet you, flashing that used-car-salesman smile he hadn’t used on you since the first time you met, and offered his elbow in a revoltingly genteel fashion. It was like he was a stranger.

The the maître d’hôtel guided you to your reserved table, and Frederick set his cane to the side, sat, and crossed his legs. You felt like you were being interviewed. Was this an interview? From an inner pocket of his suit jacket, he produced and handed you a silver-inlaid pen that cost more than your rent.

“I don’t want this.” You left it sitting on the white tablecloth and stared at it like an alien artifact, trying to figure out what made it better than a two-dollar pen from the drugstore. Maybe he could still return it. 

He got flustered, blinking in confusion, then held his chin up haughtily, jaw clenched. “No accounting for taste, then.”

You groaned. For some reason he wasn’t pretending to be wounded this time, he actually felt rejected. Over a stupid overpriced pen. “Fine! I’ll take it if it’ll make you feel better,” you caved in, snatching it off the table. “But if we break up, I’m pawning this.”

His mouth curled, primed to make a retort, but then went slack.

Was he thinking of breaking up?

Was that what dinner was about? That’s right—that trick of breaking up in a public space so you won’t cry and make a scene. It would explain why he’d been acting so nervous and distant lately. Why else would he suddenly want to take you out?

An awkward silence fell over the table. You wished this place had paper napkins you could stress-doodle on with your stupid new pen. Was it a breakup gift? Were breakup gifts a thing?

The waiter blessedly interrupted to take your orders, which Chilton gently assisted you with because everything was in French, the menu did not have pictures, and none of it appeared to be mac n’ cheese. He also ordered an entire bottle of _Chateau Lafite Rothschild_ for the table, which you divined from the slight puffing out of his chest was meant to impress you.

When it didn’t, things went back to being sulky and awkward. By the time the bread arrived at the table, he had already downed a glass, and reached to pour himself another.

Instead of grabbing the open bottle, he completely misjudged the distance and knocked it on its side with a string of swears. Dark red liquid poured out onto the table. Acting quickly, you reached to pick it up, but collided with Chilton who was also trying to salvage the bottle, and succeeded only in batting it toward him where a puddle of wine began overflowing over the edge onto his suit.

 _Puddle! Spilling!_ You needed to mop up the excess quickly! You grabbed slices of baguette and started soaking it up.

“Why are you using _bread_ when there are napkins for this?” Chilton hissed.

“I don’t know! You’re the dumbass who knocked over the Roth IRA Burgundy.”

His eyes bulged from his skull. “Rothschild! Bordeaux! And it wasn’t that bad until you _flung_ it at me!”

“Do you want to help, or do you want to continue berating me?”

“I am more than capable of doing both!” he cried, grabbing a napkin and righting the bottle.

The table was a complete disaster. Wine even got all over your stupid fancy pen, which matched the stupid fancy pen in his office. Oh. That _was_ sort of sweet, actually. As you wiped it dry, you noticed it had your name inscribed around one of the silver rings. A sentimental, personal gift, as if to imply the two of you were a matching set.

The waiter hurried over to assist, and Chilton looked positively mortified.

“Sorry,” you shrugged sheepishly. “I’m a little clumsy.”

After much fussing and cleaning was finished, Chilton sat back in his chair, eyes boring into you. He swallowed.

“Why did you...?”

“They already think I’m a mess, this way they’ll at least let _you_ back in here.”

“Well, that is very…” a dark blush crept up his neck from under his collar. “You didn’t have to do that"

You reached your hand across the fresh tablecloth, and he took it, rubbing soft circles in the flesh between your thumb and forefinger. (It was a testament to your familiarity that the massive, ostentatious gold ring he always wore no longer felt in the way when you held his hand.) His eyes lingered on you, and the blush continued working its way up to his face.

Things felt open enough to quietly ask, “So, what is all this, anyway? You’ve never wanted to take me out before.”

“I assumed you wanted _something_ from me; you have been ignoring me,” he bristled slightly at your density. “If this is not it, then _what?_ ”

You blinked. He really thought you’d been holding out on him to… get something? And the way his voice strained when he asked, “then what?” told you he would do whatever it was you requested.

You shook your head at the tablecloth and squeezed his hand. “The way you left the other day, I assumed you didn’t want to be around me.”

“Oh.” The brilliant psychiatrist hadn’t thought of that.

He didn’t apologize, and you knew he never would (about anything—it was one of the reasons so many people wanted to punch him), but his demeanor softened and any resentment you’d been holding onto faded with his dumbfounded expression.

“So.” You cleared your throat. “How’s… uh, psychiatry?”

“Well, most daily therapy sessions I have delegated to focus on writing…” He launched into a mundane description of his work, and you just… talked. Like a normal couple. It was strange in its ordinariness, but it was nice to not have your entire interaction revolve around getting dick. It made going back to his mansion after dinner and getting dick even more meaningful. You were sure this time he would let you stay.

When he tried to send you away again, you had had enough.

* * *

“I don’t understand, what changed?” you asked a little too brusquely and immediately regretted it. “I know you need space,” you breathed out in a more understanding tone, “but I need to know where we stand… Do you want to break up with me?”

He froze in the middle of throwing a shirt on over his bare chest and dropped it back into the dresser, turning to gawk at you with shocked-wide eyes. “What? No! Of course not.”

That was a relief at least. “Then why won’t you let me stay?”

He was far too exposed: his abdominal scar still prominently pointing up to his blaze of brown chest hair, and you, ambushing him in his own bedroom. “You cannot let it go, can you? You want to know?!” he snapped, limping resentfully across the room. He had reached a breaking point. “It’s because I cannot sleep with the prosthetics in.”

“The...” your brain crashed and you frantically clicked enter on the reboot screen, “...prosthetics…?”

He scowled. “Did you believe the bullet passed neatly through the copious empty space in my skull without causing any collateral damage? That this little scar is the sum total of my injury?”

Of course. You hadn’t even considered that there was more to his near-fatal shooting than what you saw on the surface. It was breathtakingly ignorant now that you thought about it. He was shot. In the head. He spent weeks at an expensive medical resort where they could perform all kinds of reconstructive miracles, and he let you believe he was dead until they had finished whatever it was they were fixing.

“Show me.”

His face twitched. “You do not want to know.”

“I do.”

“Then I do not wish you to know.”

_“Why?”_

Emotion boiled under his face, but he breathed in through his nose and kept his outward composition calm, controlled. “It would change the way you see me. Every time you look at me, I do not want you to see _that._ ”

You crossed the room to him. Gently, you put your hand on his arm, and slowly rubbed up and down. His breathing was shallow, controlled but barely. He didn’t push you away. You wrapped your arms around him and buried your face in his neck, listening to his pulse whispering a swift beat. “I just want to know you, Frederick. Please.”

* * *

Doctors had seen it. That was by necessity: he had paid for the best cosmetic prosthetics available in the country to look exactly like his old self, with the exception of the scar on his left cheek which could never be fully hidden.

He had shown it to Mason Verger, but that, too, was different—a mutual display of their motivations for revenge. It was almost a contest to see who was the more disgusting, the most wronged.

You would not be the first to see his face, but you were the first whom he cared about disgusting. The first whom he _cared about_. He did not want to see you recoil from him in shock. He did not want to lose you. He did not want you to see the darkness hanging over him.

He acquiesced, but refused to make a circus display of taking his teeth out in front of you, and vanished into the master bathroom for a long time. As you waited, you rehearsed not reacting—not showing a hint of shock that would make him regret the choice to let you in—yet as each minute ticked by, you grew more and more anxious.

The door opened.

_“Jesus fuck.”_

His lower eyelid sagged without the support of a massive chunk of facial bone holding it in place, and the eye within was the milky blue-white of a fish preserved in formaldehyde. The skin of his cheek sagged over half a mouth of missing teeth, and the left corner of his lip hung slightly too loose.

“Eloquent as always,” he said, adding some bite to the word. He hoped you knew what a jerk you were.

You rushed in to hold him, and he stiffened, looking away. “Oh, your eye,” you whined. He must have been completely blind in it, but he masked it so well you never noticed. He flinched as you touched his face.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

You pulled your hand back and searched his expression. “Do you want me to stop?”

He thought about it, and huffed, rolling one eye. You were being so cute, with your worried gaze and tender hands that wanted to be all over him. At least you were not fleeing in terror. He held his chin up. “Go ahead. Do what you want.”

With a sour frown, he let you explore his skin with your fingertips, finding scars and hollow cavities where bone was supposed to be. “You’re missing… oh, god, it must have shattered the maxillary bone, and,” you felt farther back, continuing to find hollow gaps. “Oh god, baby…”

“Do not pity me, it is unbecoming.”

“ _Heh,_ ” you breathed, slyly sliding your hands up over his shoulders and arcing them loosely around the back of his neck. “I thought you didn’t care about my motivations,” you said, languidly drawing out each vowel.

That earned an irritated look, finally meeting your gaze. You grinned back.

“Sorry,” you said, biting your lip.

You kissed him all along the sagging side of his mouth, pressing your lips to every new contour and texture. A few worried noises escaped his throat, along with half-formed words of caution of what you might not want to kiss, but they were quickly swallowed by groans of pleasure as you worshiped his mouth, reveling in each new discovery. All his imperfections were perfect, and you wanted him to feel that in every touch, filling each glowing breath with all the love and acceptance in your heart.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore, but it _itches_.”

“I hate itches.”

“As do I,” he breathed.

You kissed him again, this time his tongue danced along your lips to taste you. It darted between your teeth, curling around your tongue as his strong hands snaked around the back of your head, pulling you harder into the kiss. He grunted, teeth clashing with yours as your lips interlocked with feral passion, consuming each other until your lips were bruised and you had to break away, breathless and panting.

“I’m so glad you're alive,” you smiled, trying not to let tears well up in the corners of your eyes. “You came back to me. You’re amazing, you know that? What you can survive.”

His chest puffed out a little. He was amazing, wasn’t he? But when he spoke again, it was sullen.

“I did not want you to see what a monster I’ve become.”

You shook your head. “You’re still beautiful. Absolutely perfect. I’m sorry it happened, but you _know_ I’m going to love you no matter what…” You trailed off as a word snagged in your throat. Did you just say…

“You love me?”

Dry. Your throat suddenly felt drier than sandpaper, and swallowing didn’t fix it. You weren’t supposed to admit that to him. He was going to tease you, to twist it around somehow to use against you—

“I love you, too.”


	6. Cuddly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chilton is a touched-starved repressed angel and he deserves all of the cuddles. And sex.

The first thing you were aware of was a cold prickling of pins and needles rushing down your right arm like ice water. That made you stir. The next thing you remembered was that you were thirsty.

You flopped over to find that your glass of water on the nightstand was not on the nightstand you expected to see (your home one within arm’s reach), and was in fact, a million miles away, making it, to your just-woken-up brain, completely inaccessible. A buzz of excitement trembled your stomach like you had swallowed an electric outlet, and that outlet was filled with heart emojis.

Rubbing and flexing the pinpricks out of your arm first, you rolled back over, and there he was: Frederick Chilton lying next to you.

The faint upbeat trills and chirps of birdsong outside the bedroom window were the perfect accompaniment to the content you felt, an ode to winter melting into spring. You had missed this—you had missed him.

In the morning, he wasn’t the Dr. Frederick Chilton who was carefully put together for the rest of the world: his hair was a mess with soft tufts of brown sticking up in every which direction; his cheek was mushed into the pillow making him look a bit like a chipmunk, and there would be little red crease lines stamped into his skin from the pillowcase when he finally got up; unkempt stubble grew long in areas he would trim tidily; and he snored. He was yours, and only yours this way.

His scars were currently hidden from view, pressed into the pillow or draped with a sheet (except for his left eyelid which didn’t close properly, leaving a crescent of blue-white eye visible), but you still basked in the joy that he trusted you with his secret—that this twitchy man allowed you to see him vulnerable.

Dappled light streamed into the bedroom through a gap in the curtains. It was spacious, clean, and white, like most rooms in the palatial building, and still as impersonal as when he moved in, more like real estate staging than a home.

In fact, you were fairly sure he had kept the real estate staging to avoid having to decorate himself. There was a framed family picture in the foyer that you recognized as a stock photo. Everything was tidy and beautiful, but very little was his. Even Dr. Chilton couldn't hide the fact that a human being lived here, however, and a few personal touches bore witness to his guarded personality—a reading room stuffed with books on psychiatry, criminology, and books he had written (tucked away on an inconspicuous bottom shelf you discovered his stash of romance novels and homoerotic art)—but in the bedroom the only signs of his presence were the closet full of suits and gaudy ties, the bathroom full of prescriptions and cosmetics, and an ornate umbrella stand for his cane.

His eyelids twitched, and slowly opened to you staring at him. A soft, sleepy, adoring smile pulled the corner of his mouth up from the pillow, as if he awoke from a pleasant dream to find he was still in one.

Then the haze of sleep cleared and he realized you were _staring_ at him. At _his face_. His blood went cold. He stopped breathing.

You saw his nostrils flare and knew that panic was overtaking him, and behind his eyes there brewed the question of pushing you away again. Before he could reach that point, you smiled and whispered, “Thanks for letting me stay.” You ducked under his surprisingly muscular arm and buried yourself in his chest, so you weren’t looking at anything he was uneasy about you seeing. His body relaxed. Tucking his chin over your head possessively, he began to rub lazy circles over your back. Your legs intertwined with his until you were a warm tangle of limbs and blankets.

“I have never been with a cuddler,” he murmured. “You’re cuddly. You cuddle.”

You almost didn’t understand what he was saying, you were so lost in the baritone reverberations of his chest against your ear. When it clicked, you almost laughed in confusion. “What?”

“What?” he snapped.

“What do you mean, like… you’ve been with people who didn’t cuddle you? There are people who don’t like to cuddle?”

“Yes,” he said as if this were kindergarten-level stuff.

_“Seriously?”_

“It is what I said, is it not? Forget I spoke!”

You quickly worked to pacify his easily-bruised ego, massaging your fingers through his soft swathe of chest hair. After a few gentle circles, he calmed down again, reclining his head on the pillow with a lazy yawn. 

“Sorry, it’s just bizarre to me,” you said, still nestled on his chest. “How do you live without snuggling?”

He chewed the inside of his lip and gave it thought for the first time. “Poorly,” he concluded.

“Is it weird how much I cuddle?”

“ _Irrefutably_ , my dear.” 

“Do you like it?”

“Of course.” Proving his point, he wrapped his arms around you harder and kissed the top of your head, down your temple, and across your eyes until finding your lips, then buried himself in the crook of your neck for a long while, just holding you.

As you lay comfortably half awake, you became aware little by little of his cock rubbing against your thigh every time one of you shifted. A dull ache awakened between your legs. You felt him growing harder, and started rocking your hips with more purpose, your breath more erratic.

His hand slipped between your legs under the covers feeling your arousal, and a kaleidoscope of sensation burst to life under your skin, making you drunk with need. You slipped off your underwear and he hastily rid himself of his, his heart beating like a snare drum.

His lips met yours, eager and hot, searching, as he rubbed his cock against your entrance.

He pulled back, remembering something missing.

“One moment. I shall go put my face back on,” he blushed, pushing off from the bed, then joked with a worried grin, “Stay aroused.”

You caught his wrist. “Leave them out. I want your _real_ face.”

Shoulders deflating, he stared back at you stone faced—or what was meant to be stone faced but for the trembling in his lip and an involuntary twitch of first one cheek, then the other. He turned away and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Your heart sank, but then he opened the bedside stand, pulled out the lube, and returned.

It started slow and sweet, an extension of your cuddling with lots of kissing and reassuring caresses. He was uncertain of himself like this, but he trusted you—he wanted to trust you. He wanted to give you whatever it was you desired, and this was what you asked for. You were so strange, to want him without any masks on, even when the truth beneath them was ugly. Part of him was jumpy, waiting for you to gag and tell him to cover his ruined eye. It was going to sting dreadfully when you did, he was so vulnerable. Yet, another part was curious what it would mean if you accepted him completely. The idea of it was dizzying.

He lay on his side facing you, but keeping you pressed too close along the length of his body to easily find his face. Exploring hands roved over you, encouraging you to nuzzle into him more, ghosting breathy kisses over his skin in your warm little cave between the pillow and his neck. Your leg was thrown over his hip, and he began to glide his glistening cock over your entrance, spreading the lube and a growing heat, rocking back and forth until you were twitching. 

He made sure you were slick and ready to take him before easing inside slowly, just the head working you open. You adjusted the angle of your torso, pulling your face out from under him to gain better leverage as you rolled your hips slowly against his, feeling the stretch as your body took more of his girth. You ran your fingers up the back of his neck and embedded them in his messy hair, ruffling it more. Nibbling his lower lip, you whispered, “you feel so good,” and felt the shiver run up his spine. He was a slut for praise.

Once you had adjusted to being filled, and the thin thread of pain interwoven with the pleasure faded into a comfortable, tantalizing pressure, you pushed him back onto the mattress and straddled him. Riding his cock, you took him deeper, and deeper, setting a steady, but unhurried pace. You wanted to savor it. His hands cupped the curve of your ass, squeezing as he bucked his hips up into you, hitting a point so deep you gasped his name. “Frederick,” you repeated with more heat, “your cock feels so fucking good.” You wanted him to know how much you worshiped him, but every time you gazed down at his face, your eyelids heavy with lust, his nostrils flared.

“Do not stare.”

You tried to comply. To make him comfortable. You wanted to admire your wounded man, but he was still getting used to you knowing at all, so you closed your eyes for him and focused on the feeling of your bodies joining, and the sounds of his exertion. But when his breathing grew ragged and you could imagine the lewd, needy expression he was making, you couldn’t help peeking.

His eyes were locked on your face, so he noticed. Immediately.

“I told you…” He gave an annoyed scowl, “Not to…” flipped you onto your stomach, “look!” and took you again, burying his full length in a single rough thrust. 

You moaned loudly at the sudden pressure. “ _Oh, doctor_ , I’ve been so _bad_ ,” you goaded him on. He growled in your ear at the bait, nipping your neck punitively. Sliding a hand under you to work your aching heat, he pounded you hard from behind, driving you into the mattress. He was losing all control, falling apart, and it drove you wild. The warm ache quickly grew into an urgent burn. Every muscle in your body tightened in anticipation as you arched your back, angling your hips to meet his, searching for sweet release. Your moans grew louder with each merciless thrust stretching and filling you until you came hard with a scream, biting a pillow so the entire neighborhood wouldn’t hear. He fucked you through your climax before snapping his hips against your ass bruisingly hard, and pulling you toward him at the same time to fuck you deeper than you thought possible. Hot semen flooded your insides. Load after load kept coming as his pelvic muscles twitched and spasmed against your ass until there was not enough room to contain all of it, the extra dripping out around his cock and pooling on the expensive sheets.

You panted, letting out a breathy, shaking moan of relief. He sank on top of you, and you could feel his body trembling, hear him taking deep breaths through the nose to calm himself.

“God, that was amazing,” you sighed blissfully.

He was silent, and you wondered if everything had been too much for him, too soon. Then he answered, “I _am_ great. I do not know if I would say _God_ , but… very well. I accept the title.”

“Oh my god,” you laughed at the worst joke ever, rolling yourself out from under him.

“Yes?” he responded with mock impatience, propping himself on his elbow. “It is I, what prayers do you need answered?”

You groaned loudly and smooshed his big dumb face in your hands. You had never pegged him as the type for dad jokes, and actually… you loved it.

Suddenly you wondered what he’d be like as a father. Images of kids running his mansion’s hallways, scrawling crayon drawings all over the pristine white walls, and him saying, “Hi, hungry, I’m dad!” flashed through your mind. Fuck. If you had kids, you’d have to move into a normal home and pretend not to be rich so they wouldn’t grow up to be snobs like their father…

...And you were getting _way_ ahead of yourself.

“What is it?” He asked softly but with a tinge of color at his cheeks from being stared at so dreamily as you seemed to drift off into your own world. Nobody had ever looked at him like that.

“Nothing,” you said. “I love you.”

He kissed you on the forehead warmly, and you could feel his lips smiling against you. He wasn’t sure if he would ever get used to hearing those beautiful, heady words. They set him reeling every time. You were so odd, so impossible to explain within his worldview, the way you loved him. Perfection, status, money, appearances—all of the currency that ruled his life you shrugged off like it was nothing, and then you saw his grotesque disfigurement and you loved him. 

Drawing back, his mouth tightened into a skeptical line, and he studied your face clinically. “Dysmorphophilia,” he said. 

“What?” you blinked. 

“A paraphilia. Sexual arousal derived from a physically deformed partner.” He began his dry explanation in a doctor-like monotone, but then a slyness crept into his voice and he shook his head with a _tsk-tsk._ “I always knew you were... peculiar.”

“Do you _have_ to diagnose my feelings for you?”

“Of course not. Normally I would charge for my services. This, you may consider a favor.” 

“You are the worst.”

He gave a short, satisfied hum. The corner of his mouth twitched up, and one sassy shoulder shrugged. “You love me,” he boasted. 

With an annoyed groan, you pulled him on top of you so his lips were inches from yours, and his green eyes watched you with a mixture of happiness and trepidation (rather, one watched, and the ghostly eye followed the green’s lead). Your heart hammered in your chest, even though you were still sticky with sex and there should have been nothing left to be shy or flustered about. “I do, you know. I really do.”


	7. Pride & Possessiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the idiots have admitted they love each other, but are still figuring out how not to be assholes

Trust was a difficult thing for Dr. Frederick Chilton. There were few people he had ever trusted, and one of them had been feeding him _people_ at dinner parties.

Any show of weakness, he learned, would inevitably be turned against him, and clearly he could not count on himself to realize when he was being manipulated. Played. He had been played so many times.

When you said you loved him, how could he be certain?

The entire concept was abstract as it was. His parents had an icy relationship, and he had been raised more by nannies and boarding schools than them, so love was a thing he had observed hints of around him, and become aware of its existence through its absence in his own life. Love was a negative space drawing.

He distinctly remembered one of his childhood friends being picked up by his parents at the end of a school year, crying tears of joy as he leaped into the smiling couple’s arms. They held his hand, and asked about what friends he had made.

It made him feel so hollow.

Pity made sense. You had a basic empathy response to his woundedness, and it compelled you to nurture him to health. Pity he understood. But you said you loved him now. 

Love was _more_. Love was many things, as he gathered it, defined in different ways. Neurologically, love was a release of chemicals such as oxytocin to form lasting bonds. Evolutionarily, it was a symbiotic partnership that benefited the survival of both parties and their children. Love was an intense feeling, and a deliberate commitment. It was mutual respect and care. It was more than he could imagine anyone feeling toward him. 

Chilton eyed the _Is Your Crush In Love With You?_ quiz advertised on the cover of a teen magazine at a newspaper stand and almost—almost!—considered buying it before his pride as a psychiatrist (and an adult man) stopped him.

It should be easy to diagnose love. Abnormal psychology was far more complex than this mundane tripe. He simply had to list out the evidence in a logical fashion. He scrawled down pro and con columns in a notebook.

_Definitely Not Love:_

> _1\. Face too gross._

Before getting shot, he thought he had been reasonably handsome—not tall or athletic, but acceptable. Who would accept him now? Anyone in their right mind would be disgusted after seeing his face so mutilated. And yet…

_Proof It’s Love:_

> _1\. Kisses my gross face._

You saw his face, and if you were disgusted, you hid it damned well. You had been alarmed, and worried… and then you kissed him. You kissed him on every horrible part as if you loved him even more for being broken—which, frankly, made you diagnosable, but reassured him that your bond was stronger than a mere act.

Or did it prove even more conclusively that it was an act? Anyone who wasn’t after something would have run away, but you didn’t care what he looked like, because it was all a performance!

_Definitely Not Love:_

> _2\. Kisses my gross face. Fake._

It was as yet unclear what the something was that you were after, however. The more time that went by, the more it seemed you really didn’t care about his money. You tried to turn down a $900 Montblanc pen, proving yet again your utter lack of taste. Even when he was presumed deceased, you were so overwrought by his assassination that Jack Crawford insisted upon letting you in on it before you did something rash. You mourned him when there was nothing to gain.

_Proof It’s Love:_

> _2\. Not in it for money_

You were frequently rude to him. It was what he first loathed about you—that absolute disregard for manners and polite conversation. Maybe— _maybe_ —he had done a few things which could be construed as dishonest or mishandled, but he was still an esteemed doctor. You would have shown the respect his station warranted if you desired him as a partner.

_Definitely Not Love:_

> _3\. Calls me an idiot._

A poor strategy if you were _pretending_ to love him, though. His most manipulative exes would certainly apply insults strategically to bend him to their will, but always started off with nothing but flattery and kindness in the wooing phase. Traps are usually baited with honey.

Your behavior was crass out of blunt honesty and an absence of diplomatic tact. You were rude when he was unethical or selfish, because he was those things. Hannibal was at his most friendly when he was at his worst, but you wanted him to be better. You wanted a partner. 

If your relationship were an elaborate manipulation, you would have to be an intelligent psychopath, but that hypothesis simply did not hold up to scrutiny. Psychopaths chose their words carefully, and always maintained their cold, predatory calm. You once called him “ass-butt” when you were mad. No serial killer could be as clumsy and tactless. 

You were the opposite of a psychopath: warm, nurturing, emotional, and an utter mess. 

_Proof It’s Love:_

> _3\. Calls me an idiot._

He leaned back in his office chair, staring down at the paper. There were dozens of things he could add to the love column, now that he thought about it. You laughed at his bad jokes. Listened to him talk about things that certainly bored you. Reminded him to take his medicine when he worked late and forgot. Spent time with him. Admired him. You never turned against him. Never tried to hurt him. He had to accept the evidence: you loved him. Entirely. 

At the very least, he was certain he loved _you_. This novel rush of feelings that had been painting in the negative space of his soul since he first woke up to your smile could only be love. Your warmth radiated around him, enveloped him in its light, and he could no longer imagine how he’d lived without it. He was certain he loved you, because he had never cared about anyone more than himself before.

Love was an unusual thing for Dr. Frederick Chilton. It was weakness, and it was invulnerability. He was exposed. Raw. It made him feel safe with you, and more afraid than ever that you would be taken away. 

It took four decades, but Frederick Chilton’s walls were coming down, and it opened up a Pandora’s box of feelings he was not equipped to cope with.

* * *

He loved you! It swam around your head in a sing-song voice, distracting you and making you hum subconsciously and sway to a secret rhythm while you were at work. That wonderful pompous jerk _loved you_. You were in a dream.

It made you dizzy how tender and uncertain he could be. He was not particularly comfortable with public displays of affection—there was a vulnerability when he was with you that he could not tolerate anyone else seeing—but he still managed to have his hands on you at nearly every moment. A light touch on the small of your back: restrained, but possessive. His finger grazing across the back of your knuckles under the table. Leaning close to see something you were looking at and putting his hands on your shoulders. He hated being far from you for long. 

Since showing you his face and finding that the world did not end, he had been downright clingy.

“You know I’m out of town on a case,” you explained for the thousandth time to an increasingly sulky doctor.

“I see,” he pouted, “Well, perhaps I will call Vanessa and see if _she_ wants to have dinner tonight.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

 _“Excuse me?”_ he feigned offense very seriously, as if he didn’t know you knew he was being a dick on purpose.

Early in your relationship you had both been very clear that it was just sex, and not at all anything that involved a monogamous commitment or, god forbid, feelings. You’d never explicitly updated this agreement to better reflect the _love you were in_ and he was provoking you with it.

“Who is ‘Vanessa,’ anyway? Your cousin?”

“Aunt,” he admitted tersely. “I demand you come to my house this evening!”

You laughed into the receiver, imagining the way his cheeks were puffing out. “I miss you too, babe. I’ll be back in Baltimore tomorrow.”

There was a quiet sigh. “Please be careful.”

He loved you, but was he your boyfriend? Were you exclusive now? These were questions you’d been having, and were too afraid to ask for fear that the answers would be no. Even though he was just being a manipulative little brat, his casual implication of dating other people still hung in your brain, interrupting the pleasant birdsong.

* * *

“Are you embarrassed of me?”

Chilton paused mid-comparison of two ties from his closet and scoffed. One was blue and formal, while the other had splashes of bold purple, and he was trying to decide which gave off the better impression of staggering wealth and success.

“Yes,” he answered with impatience. “You do not know how to behave as a civilized adult.” He went back to sorting through his closet for an outfit.

Your impulse to punch him in the face was acutely returning. “Seriously? Because I didn’t know which fork was for the salad?”

“You have no etiquette, you dress like a tourist, your favorite wine comes from a box...” He would have continued but your cheeks were burning and you screamed with indignation.

“Wow, so I’m just your dirty secret then, is that it?”

“I thought you did not like ‘fancy’ occasions. This dinner party will be attended only by the foremost luminaries in the psychiatric field, and other professionals of note. You would find it tediously dull, I am sure.”

“You said it was an old friend. I don’t know any of your friends, and if we’re going to be together you can’t just… keep me in your closet for sex!”

“Do not be childish.”

That was the last straw. You stomped your foot (not necessarily disproving the ‘childish’ remark) and shouted, “You are unbelievable! You have no respect for me at all, do you? I thought that you—that we were… But really, I just let myself forget what a raging asshole you are!”

He called out your name from somewhere behind you as you stormed out, but you didn't listen, slamming the door.

* * *

Were you being unfair? If he wasn’t ready to introduce you to an old colleague, could you fault him for wanting to take things slow? But no—he expressly admitted to being embarrassed of you. He didn’t think you would fit in with these people so he was hiding you in shame—and he was probably right. 

How could you ever hope to really be with someone like him? You were kidding yourself. 

You were crying and watching _Aliens_ (you needed to watch people getting ripped apart and exploding to calm down) when there was a knock at your door. Chilton stood on the other side with a purple tie, and some flowers that were definitely yanked from your neighbor’s garden. He handed them to you indifferently.

“Come on, then,” he said.

You grunted in confusion.

“Come to dinner. Be my plus one.”

“Are you kidding?” you retracted the spoon of Chinese takeout from your mouth. “Why would I want to go anywhere with you and your snobby friends where I’ll just embarrass everybody by being a _pleb?_ ”

His shoulders sank and he looked like a man half his size—which was already fairly small. He looked like a folding chair you could tuck under your arm and carry away. You worried you might forgive him immediately.

“Because I want you to be there. Because I love you.”

Your arms crossed over your chest, unyielding.

An uncomfortable groan rumbled his throat, and his eyes rolled up to the ceiling as they always did when he admitted to being wrong. “I _apologize_. For my rude behavior.”

Your arms considered the apology, and reluctantly uncrossed themselves.

“I am sorry. I love you.” He pouted, meeting your gaze with those irresistible puppy dog eyes, and took your hand. “Now just… come, we are going to be late.”

“Jerk.” You kissed him. His breath tasted like mint, and his spicy aftershave was fresh and strong.

“I know.”

“Big jerk.” You kissed him again, this time letting your lips linger at the edge of his when you pulled back, his nose brushing against yours.

“The worst,” he breathed.

“ _Poopyfacejerkbuttpants_ ,” you declared.

“You are a child!” He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Why do I love you?”

“I’m very sexy,” you grinned, wagging your eyebrows.

His chest puffed with a short laugh. “You are very sexy. And patient, and wise, and most likely smarter than me. Well,” he changed his mind on the last point, “close, anyway.” He looked down over the teriyaki-stained sweatpants you were wearing. “Now put on real clothing, and _try_ not to appear homeless.”

* * *

What he had described as an annual dinner party with an old friend from his Harvard years was actually a pissing contest carefully couched in the trappings of polite high society.

Nobody _mocked_ Chilton’s dietary restrictions or recent arrest under suspicion of being the Chesapeake Ripper (that would be rude), but they did express their sincerest _worry_ for him, observing how such trauma must have explained why it had been so long since he last published.

Everyone was dressed so elegantly you felt like a Good Will clearance sale rack, and they were so accomplished and interesting you felt like a Good Will clearance sale rack. A woman named Linnea was visiting from Norway with hair like the sun’s rays and eyeliner sharp enough to cut diamonds. She spoke five languages and had sequenced the genes of a plant that might one day cure cancer. When Chilton smiled his best used-car-salesman trying-to-impress-you smile at her, your skull nearly burst open.

Not that you were jealous, you just—OK! Of course you were jealous! She was a goddess who seemed more his type than you ever were, and he was being _nice_. He was never that nice!

The host, his “friend” Victor, had walked off the cover of a GQ magazine. Where Chilton always seemed to be trying too hard, Victor emanated confidence and power as naturally as breathing, a trait infused in his blood from generations of old money—though there was something unnaturally macabre in his sallow complexion.

He had four children stashed away somewhere with the au pair in one of the guest houses. You knew, because he brought it up, putting his hand around the shoulder of his equally magnificent golden-haired wife, as a point of pride. Emphasis on _point_. The purpose of dinner was clearly for them to take stock of each other’s lives and achievements and determine who was winning.

No wonder Chilton didn’t want you there.

It was the kind of environment that made you want to slam your fist down on the table, scream, “CUT THE CRAP!” and tell them to suck a bag of dicks. But Chilton clearly wanted to ingratiate himself with them, and you had promised not to be too embarrassing.

However out of place you felt at that stately solid oak table, it was thrilling to watch Chilton at the peak of his game.

“It’s always an honor to treat someone who has been in space, you know?” Victor humbly recounted working as a therapist for NASA. “What those men get to see up there among the stars is beyond anything I can understand as a mere doctor. You can imagine the challenge.”

Chilton nodded amicably. “Not every psychiatrist is cut out to deal with the difficult cases. The psychopathic mind is dangerous territory, but I have always sought to delve into the most inaccessible parts of the human psyche, at the frontier of our understanding of the brain. That is where the greatest discoveries are to be made.”

He just made his job sound cooler than astronauts. _Point, swish!_ You wished you had popcorn instead of whatever fermented mollusk nightmare was on your plate.

“I’m just sorry for the horror stories this one must have to endure when you get home!” Victor’s wife laughed a friendly, teasing high-pitched trill, gesturing to you sympathetically. _Oh no,_ you thought. _They hunt in packs_.

Chilton’s amicable smile tightened. Besides the obvious snub toward the grim nature of his work, they knew the two of you weren’t married or even living together, and therefore his house was desolately empty when he got home. _Point to Blondie_.

Counteroffensive: You took Chilton’s hand and pet it in the most sickeningly saccharine gesture of affection you could think of, and swooned about how dearly you appreciated the wonderful, important work he did. The danger really spiced things up in bed, too!

He choked on his wine. So did Victor. You wondered if anyone had food in their mouths and how many points you’d win for fatalities.

A roaring laugh echoed through the dining room, shaking the table. A man who shared Victor’s features, but younger and with a bigger smile, air high-fived you from across the expanse. You ended up being surprisingly popular after that little ice-breaker, lightening the mood by telling hilarious crime scene stories about dumb criminals and weird accidents. They thought you were a breath of fresh air.

You and Ernest—the host’s younger brother—especially hit it off. He’d joined the military as soon as he turned 18 as a rebellion against all the “hoity-toity nonsense” in his family, and had some stories that made even your toes curl. After dinner you hung out in the garden looking for bugs while everyone inside chatted about opera, wine, and what important doctors they were. The Norwegian goddess joined you for awhile, too, rattling off plant species in the landscaping. She was actually pretty cool. If Frederick were going to cheat on you, she’d be your top choice for sure.

* * *

Chilton stared sideways out the panoramic glass wall overlooking the gardens. There, under the faded yellow glow of string lights and cradled by a lush border of foliage, you were still talking with that meathead. He tried to use his peripheral vision so the others couldn’t see him staring after you like a lost, lovelorn fawn, but was not doing a good job.

You were going to leave him. He knew it would happen if he brought you (though he thought it would be Victor who seduced you away from him), and he couldn’t stand it. It burned like hot coals in his chest.

He drank.

He drank _a lot_.

He drank until he got up the courage to stagger outside on his cane to grab you and say, “We’re leaving!”

“Excuse me?” you said, startled by the abruptness of his demand. Pulling your wrist back out of his grasp you were surprised at how unbalanced he was. You had never seen him drunk, and a tiny voice tempted you to poke him in the chest and see how far he wobbled.

He hissed in your ear, “Do not talk with him, he is trying to steal you from me!” not as privately as he thought he was being.

“Hey. Watch it, pal,” said Ernest.

Chilton lurched and caught himself on you, wrapping his arms protectively around you until he was draped on your shoulders like a human Superman cape, dropping his cane on the floor. “Don’t... do not leave me,” he slurred. “I love you. I love you.”

Cool. He was a goofy drunk. A sad, goofy, koala drunk.

You spun in his arms to face him, and pressed your cool palms against the flushed sides of his red face. He was trying very hard to look serious, and you were certain he thought he was doing a great job at it, in much the same way a kindergartner thinks they are being very serious and grown-up demanding a second juice box. “Oh, honey… you really can’t drink like that with one kidney. It’s not good for you.”

“Please don’t leave?” he begged.

“Frederick...” So this was what being a parent to a toddler was like.

“I knew… you would...” His eyelids drooped, and more of his weight shifted onto you.

“OK, I think it _is_ time to leave,” you strained to hold him up.

Ernest very kindly helped you get him and his cane to the front of the house and called for the valet to bring the car around. Judging eyes watched from inside while he vomited into a topiary. Eventually the hosts came to the door to inquire if everything was all right, and you politely apologized for Chilton being such a lightweight since his very tragic, very brave recovery from being maimed. Hopefully that would save him _some_ face.

Thanking Ernest one last time, you grumbled as you slid behind the wheel. Chilton had, naturally, driven his impractical vintage penis-substitute car, and now you had to figure out how to drive the thing back.

* * *

Chilton groaned, slowly rolled his shoulder, and woke up slumped and contorted into the passenger seat. He groaned louder.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Like someone drove a brick through my skull. No—like I was shot in the head again.” He massaged his temples blearily as he recovered consciousness. His eyes flew open. “What happened? Why are we in the car?”

“Well, uh...” you adjusted your grip on the steering wheel. “Let’s just say _one_ of us was embarrassing and leave it at that?”

“Merciful god.” He remembered the fourth glass of wine. And the scotch.

He remembered that guy you were talking to.

“You were flirting with another man,” he accused.

“I was not flirting. He was married. All he could talk about was getting back to his husband in Colorado Springs—he’s only visiting here for a week.”

Chilton paused. “That does not preclude flirting.”

“And what about you? I saw how you looked at Linnea. You were so nice to her—to all of them—like you were trying so hard to impress those people.”

“It is called having manners.”

“You never look at me like that. Why aren’t you ever that polite with _me?_ ”

You knew the answer—because you weren’t good enough. You weren’t some high-class snob he needed to impress, you were just a nobody. But he took a long time to reply, as if the question had come as a shock.

“I never thought you wanted that,” he finally said. He grew quiet and serious, talking in a soft voice. “We have always been forthright with each other. You detest false kindness, and that personality is a construction. You know me too well—you know I am a miserable, misanthropic, autocratic, petulant egoist… but you still want to be with me. The flawed fool. That is why I love you, why I could never bear to start over without you. You are the only one who sees me, and still wanted to...” He drifted off and lost his train of thought. “Perhaps I could be kinder. I do not want to lose you. I do not want to drive you away. Sometimes I forget… I forget how to be kind to one I care for most.” Words would not stop spilling from his mouth. He was being unusually candid, a sign that he was still very drunk. “I knew if you came, you would find someone better. You might leave. Maybe not tonight, but you would see what was out there, and eventually...”

“I thought you were embarrassed of me.”

“That too.”

”Ah.”

A sleepy, squinty-eyed smile lit his face as he thought he about it. “You are so very unrefined, and yet irresistibly appealing. Do you realize you could charm anyone? That you would choose to stay with me is...” He sighed and swung his head loosely until it came to rest against the side window with a dull thunk. He frowned. “Victor and I are the same age, and he has a wife, and children… he treats _space men_. I can never measure up to his accomplishments.”

“Well that’s a dumb way to look at life, you ding-dong.”

His hangover growled and glared at you through heavily squinted eyelids.

“Life isn’t measured in the number of achievements you’ve tallied up.” You risked taking your hand off the fiddly antique gearstick to reach for him, and he hummed with affection as your fingers interlocked. “I’m not going to trade you in for a better model. I love my misanthropic, petulant Frederick. I’ll take him as-is. I don’t know why you think I’m going to leave you, but I won’t. I love you.”

* * *

You drove him back to your apartment at his request, because, quote: I love and respect the fuck out of you, baby. He would later vehemently deny phrasing it that way. Then he dropped off into sleep again with his head against the window for the remainder of the drive.

His car stuck out like a sore thumb in your neighborhood, as did he in his thousand-dollar suit, but it was sweet that he wanted to stay on your turf for a change.

He whined, stretching out cramped muscles as he settled into the pillows. You spread out on the blankets next to him, admiring his restraint in not complaining about the thread count. You had to confess, your own bed felt stiflingly small compared to what you were now used to.

Quiet, murmured conversation filled the dark long into the night, talking about your fears and jealousy. You confessed how inadequate you felt in his world, how it much stung when he smiled at that beautiful woman. He didn’t tease you like you thought he would, but comforted you honestly that you had nothing to fear—he would never.

“She seemed more your type than me,” you mumbled into a pillow, remembering the glamorous woman.

“Linnea? Don’t be ridiculous—you know my type. You.”

You emitted an incoherent trill of bird and chipmunk noises as your cheeks went red. He wrapped a strong arm around your waist and pulled you against him, nuzzling into the crook of your neck. A question had been nagging at your mind for weeks whose answer seemed obvious now, but you still had to ask it.

“Frederick… are we a couple?”

The gentle rise and fall of his chest stopped abruptly. “What would you like us to be?” he carefully asked after a few tense seconds.

You swallowed. He was putting it all on you, then. It would destroy you if he said you’re too demanding, clingy, or moving too fast, but it gave you encouragement that he was literally clinging to your body like a tipsy koala.

“I want you to be my boyfriend. I don’t want to be with anyone else. And I don’t want you running off on random dates with random Vanessas to make me jealous.”

“How old-fashioned,” he quipped, trying to sound nonchalant while a wide smile beamed quietly across his face, cheeks red with an alcohol-assisted flush. “You want to be mine, then?” he nuzzled his nose against you.

“Yes, I do,” you breathed, fireworks going off in your stomach.

He melted at the confession, and spent the rest of the night curled around you possessively, dreaming of sweet visions that were, for once, uninterrupted by nightmares.

* * *

His hips jerked rhythmically up into you as you rode him, his fingers searching, clawing up your back. His hungry mouth left dark bruises as he nipped and sucked his way up your throat, snarling against your skin. “Frederick!” You gasped and moaned with each bite. You knew he was leaving marks above your collar that you’d have to creatively hide, or make excuses for (or just deal with everyone at work knowing), and that he was doing it on purpose, but you didn’t care. It was exciting having him claim you.

As his nips and kisses crested the outline of your jaw, you dipped your chin down and took his mouth. His lips were soft and yielding to you, but burning with heat and hunger and already wet from the sloppy work he made of your neck, and he moaned your name with needy satisfaction as you kissed him, his eyes closing. His tongue slipped between your lips, tracing the inside flesh and the outline of your teeth without interrupting the rhythm of his thrusting hips that worked you open and built up a sensational throb.

Your breath and sweat mingled as you rocked together, intertwined. His helpless, pleading noises drove you crazy as he whined and growled, making you buck against him harder just to draw more sounds from him and watch his face as he lost himself completely. The throbbing between your legs roared to a frenzy as he arched beneath you and his pace became erratic, each thrust driving deeper, hips snapping against you roughly as his cock buried its full length deep inside.

The warmth of his seed flooded you, but he pulled out quickly before he was completely finished, flipped you onto your back and kneeled over you. His hand frenetically stroked his cock until long lines of hot cum drizzled your stomach.

He leaned over you and kissed you ferociously, a clashing of teeth and tongues, while you curled your fingers through his hair and continued rocking your hips against his leg chasing your unfulfilled release. _“Mine,”_ he smiled against your lips.

He sat up, breathless and content.

You looked down at the sticky mess he made of your torso. “Marking your territory?”

“You make me sound like a dog lifting his leg.” He raised an eyebrow skeptically.

“Aren’t you, essentially...?” you began to tease, but gave up with a shake of your head. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but you grabbed his arm before he could leave. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Work, my dear.”

“I don’t think so.” You pulled him back into bed, pressed him down on his back and climbed on top of him, angling your hips into his mouth. “You still have a job to do here.”

“You’re sticky!” he complained, squirming under you.

“I know. You made such a mess, _doctor_. Help me?”

He glared up petulantly between your thighs, but a coy pout spread over his lips, and one of his long fingers traced the length of your leg. He does ever so love it when you call him doctor.

“Very well,” he conceded as you grabbed the back of his head and rode his face into the pillow.

* * *

_Hannibal the Cannibal_ was finally captured, and Frederick Chilton wrote the definitive book on him. And by “definitive,” you meant full of lies, sleaze, and enough half-truths that nobody would know the difference.

How could you complain? It worked.

He got a bestseller, and the next three years were a whirlwind of book tours, press releases, panels, and all the fame and respect he ever wanted. It was a good thing you were there to make sure it didn’t go to his head! (In reality, the mild-but-constant aching of his left cheek was enough to keep him as humble as Chilton-ly possible—which was, admittedly, extremely arrogant.)

He stepped away from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, leaving it under the care of Dr. Alana Bloom. According to Dr. Chilton, it was to focus on writing and speaking engagements for which he was hotly in demand, however the decision came just weeks after you warned him to stay away from Hannibal Lecter.

“I am writing a book about him. Stay away?” he mocked. “Do you know how long I have waited to have him in captivity? In _my_ facility?”

“Don’t be an idiot! Trying to get revenge by being his jailer is just poking the bear.” 

“The ‘bear’ will be spending the rest of his days rotting behind bars,” he replied in a honeyed voice dripping with sarcasm. “You cannot deny me the pleasure of watching him grow old and infirm, slowly forgotten by the world as his teeth one by one fall out.”

“You always do this—you always think you’re above danger, and then it comes back to bite you! Hannibal will find a way to hurt you if you piss him off.”

“You give the man far too much credit,” he scoffed. 

“Stop trying to get revenge.” You stepped close, tapping the chest of his tattersall dress shirt. “Focus on what you still have instead of everything you’ve lost.”

“You mean _you?_ ” he quirked a brow, scoffing. “I did not think you so trite.”

“I mean your other eye, asshole! I mean your _life!_ ”

Tempers flared as you snarled in each other’s faces, and twenty minutes and several broken pieces of office decor later, you rolled off of each other feeling much calmer.

“Stay away from him,” you started again, softer this time, your hand buried under the unbuttoned opening of his shirt. “I don’t want him in your head. Everyone changes when they’re around him for too long, and I don’t want you to turn into someone else. I don’t want to lose you. Just walk away this time. Please?”

And he did. And for three entire years, he wasn’t brutally maimed.


	8. Three Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snapshots of life with a fussy brat

With the lease up on your apartment, Frederick invited you to move in with him. It seemed like the next logical step in your relationship, especially considering how frequently you slept there anyway—though he had to justify the choice by saying he “couldn’t stand seeing you living in squalor.” The house was certainly big enough for two people (or several less-wealthy families).

It was nice living with him, because you lived very different lives. Rather than finding it stifling to be trapped in the same house, it was freeing that you could spend so much of the day apart—or weeks, as it often was, traveling for cases or book promotion tours—and yet always be connected by the home you would return to at the end of it all.

You were planets of the solar system orbiting the same sun. 

The stability of that was comforting. So much had changed—Will Graham left and cut ties with the FBI, Hannibal Lecter was imprisoned at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where Alana Bloom now held Chilton’s old job, and you were considering following Will’s lead and pursuing new career options. It made you glad to have someone familiar to keep you company, and always be there when you needed him. 

For all the good, living with Frederick Chilton was not always easy. He was a shameless snob who did not believe in laundry chairs, and panicked when his state-of-the-art kitchen was filled with sugary cereals with cartoon characters on the box. There were many clashes of egos early on, some of which never fully disappeared. Now that his star was rising, he insisted you dress a certain way when you were to be seen in public together—particularly at any sort of publicity event or psychiatric conference, but anywhere really that he might be recognized. He was yours, and that meant you reflected upon him. He updated your entire wardrobe like you were starring in an episode of Queer Eye, and had your hair professionally styled.

You couldn’t even be annoyed at the controlling implications of it—you were never great at dressing professionally, and it was exciting to see yourself looking so sharp in the mirror. You could surrender that to him. He enjoyed sophisticated things, like the opera and restaurants where celebrities eat, and now you didn’t feel so out of place when you joined him.

“You actually look quite elegant,” he nodded in surprised approval at your new attire.

You stuck out your tongue.

“Do not tempt me with that,” he said with a feline wiggle of his shoulders. “We have engagements to get to, and I do not want to re-do my face.” He wrapped the hand not gripping a cane around your hip and kissed you, coaxing your naughty tongue into his mouth with a lustful growl.

Any time he was too fussy and judgmental to the point of being unkind, you were quite practiced at flicking him back down to earth. He rarely apologized, of course, but would look up and purse his lips in thought before admitting, “You may be right.”

He was a sassy little bitch, but you knew that. It’s why you loved him.

You loved him.

You did. It was strange to realize how much you loved someone you used to hate, whose traits you would normally find incompatible with your own. He was a miserable little rich man with a self-satisfied sneer, a flare for drama, and perpetually questionable ethics, yet you would do anything to keep him safe. You wanted to stay by his side forever.

And there was something to be said about his difficult personality when you were not on the receiving end of it.

Being on his side was _fun_ —his hand at your back as he verbally destroyed someone with a catty insinuation that left their eyes glowering with indignation. _That used to be me,_ you thought. Now you were up on his throne with him, and the view was much better.

You wanted to stay through all the medications, physical therapy, and regular hospital visits to tweak his prosthetics and make sure his remaining organs were all still functioning properly. You wanted to stay even as you questioned how much of your affection for him was pity in disguise, as he had suggested the first time you slept with him in a fit of explosive passion—that you liked wounded birds.

If it _was_ pity, and being pity meant you would have to leave, then you resolved to stuff your fingers in your ears and ignore it. No psychoanalysis would make you give him up. You wanted to keep orbiting the sun together.

* * *

Calliope music paraded through the air with aggressively cheerful pneumatic whistles that grabbed your eardrums and pulled them screaming into the 1920s. Shrieks, laughter, bells, and shouts rushed by.

Frederick Chilton stuck close beside you and mistrustfully held a greasy paper plate like it was a venomous snake.

It seemed only fair that in return for dressing up, you made him dress down and do normal-person things, like go to the county fair and eat deliciously greasy fried foods. It was like a cultural exchange program.

“Every moment I am not writing my next book is another moment the world goes without a groundbreaking revelation on the human psyche,” he had snipped when you first suggested the outing. He barely looked up from his computer, where he sat typing in a suave leather office chair.

“Oh come on, you owe me,” you persisted. “I am sick and tired of fancy museums and fancy restaurants and fancy psychiatric conventions. Next time we’re in a hotel, there should be Star Trek costumes involved!” He straightened like you’d shoved a rod up his spine, and you chuckled inwardly at his petty aversion to being seen at _that type_ of convention. “Come on, it’s just the fair,” you rubbed his shoulders and he groaned with annoyance. “Nobody important will be there. You’ll be totally incognito. Be a commoner with me.”

“I suppose it is the least I can do,” he caved in at last, leaning his head back to rest on your chest, glancing up at you through his eyebrows. “Since it is so important to you, I shall partake of your proletariat festivities.”

“Don’t say proletariat when we’re at the fair, you bougie dork.”

He wore a plain black t-shirt, and his hair wasn’t quite as primly styled as usual, letting a few strands fly free. The less he stood out from the crowd, the less likely a professional acquaintance or fan would recognize him.

Even living with Chilton, it was rare to see him dressed so casually, and you had expected it to be disconcerting. Instead, you found yourself drooling. He was sexy in a suit, but so was everybody with the correct fit. The unstructured t-shirt hugged his broad chest and revealed those alarmingly muscular arms that were usually a secret hidden under sleeves.

It was odd seeing your private Chilton—reserved for nights and mornings—out in the world, and a reminder of how lucky you were.

He managed to look dapper even with powdered sugar on his shirt.

“Funnel cake?” he cringed, as if the word itself was in poor taste. “Are we certain this is food?”

“You are _ridiculously_ hoity-toity.”

“I do enjoy the finer things in life,” he boasted in a smooth, self-congratulatory hum.

You were about to sass him when you realized his admiring eyes were fixed on you, and he wore an expectant smirk on his lips. Your scowl cracked open into a tender laugh, and you linked your arm with his, giving him a playful hip bump.

His eyes widened at you in mock horror. “You would _attack_ a man with a cane?” He awaited your answer with that same peevish smirk, but you didn’t have anything clever on your tongue, so you pulled him into a kiss instead. He melted against your lips, having gotten what he wanted.

Frederick refused to go on any rides, citing safety concerns and his delicate viscera, but you perused a hundred breeds of chickens, pet the World’s Tallest Clydesdale, watched pigs racing, browsed local artwork, and sampled craft beers which he had to admit were pretty good. You paid far too much money to shoot water guns at a spinning target faster than other carnival-goers so you could win an oversize plush of a corgi, which turned out to be filled with disappointing foam stuffing.

After finally placing a piece of sugary fried dough in his mouth, his eyes closed, and when they opened again, he declared it “not terrible.” Then inhaled it and spent the rest of the fair surreptitiously looking for another funnel cake stand.

When you got home, he confessed, with his most stern and dignified demeanor, that he may have, perhaps had fun, juvenile as it was. Then he quietly suggested that he would make an excellent Spock.

* * *

“I am never going to be perfect enough for you, am I?” you cried after another petty argument over another petty thing like stacking the cups in the cupboard in precisely the correct order. “How do you live with me? It must drive you crazy.”

Months of feeling inadequate bubbled to the surface all at once. Everything he did was so controlled, so exact, you really did wonder why he would ever be with someone like you.

“No,” he frowned, and as he gently took your shoulders his heart was crumbling in his eyes. There was a sorry on the tip of his tongue, but this was not the lottery-winning occasion he would say the word itself. He didn’t need to. He would say it in other ways.

His warm lips pressed your forehead as he rubbed loving circles on your arms with his thumbs. “Do you know who was perfect? Hannibal. I would rather live with a hot mess than a cold-blooded monster. One of us should be warm, anyway,” he gave a self-deprecating smile. “I must do better to remember the beauty of imperfection, because you are perfect to me.”

* * *

The front door opened well after the sun had disappeared and the stars had begun to come out. Frederick came home drained and exhausted from being on his feet all day trying to dominate professional rivals who were all, in turn, out to get him.

Conferences were invigorating, an exciting place to strut one’s superiority, make connections, and scope out the competition… until they were not, and they became whichever circle of Hell it is that makes one have to continually defend oneself to people for whom one will never be good enough.

You looked up from the book you were reading. You didn’t get up from the couch cushion’s gravitational embrace, but smiled with stars in your eyes, and called, “Frederick!”

_Home._

He crawled onto the couch next to you, and laid his head in your lap. You set the book aside and ran your fingers through his hair, listening to the sweet, sleepy noises of pleasure the action evoked. Fantasies of this moment had kept him alive all day. You caressed his neck and the prickly stubble along the side of his jaw, and he turned his face into your palm and kissed it. He adored the way you touched him with your gentle, caring hands. Yawning, you reclined into the deep, plush cushions, and he shifted so you were both laying next to each other, content in each other’s embrace. He cuddled into your chest, face buried in your shirt.

“You smell like tacos.”

It was unclear how peevishly he intended the observation, so you simply replied, “I made tacos for dinner.”

“The cheap American kind that are nothing but ground beef, shredded cheese, and an insult to Mexican culture,” he said, voice muffled by the fabric.

“Mm-hmm,” you said.

“They are not real food.”

“Do you want some?”

“God, yes.”

* * *

With physical therapy, Chilton was finally able to walk comfortably without assistance again.

Technically, he had been able to for a long time. The cane was a crutch—in the figurative, not the literal, sense. In the literal sense it was very much _not_ a crutch, or even a cane. At best, it was an expensive, silver-topped walking stick. He clung to it like a security blanket, or as a prop to garner pity, or simply because it was a dramatic accessory. The threat of physical therapy simply convinced him to let go of the pretense.

Like the spiral staircases of his home, some things about Dr. Chilton were fussy and theatrical for no reason.

It was almost a shame, you thought. That thing was the epitome of his dapper style (he might as well put on tap shoes, a top hat, and put on the Ritz with Fred Astaire), and it brought to mind such kinky images.

It was not one of those lightweight BDSM canes, and therefore was far too heavy to do any spanking with, assuming you wanted to be able to sit down any time in the next month. However, you recalled with some excitement his tapping it on the inside of your heels to get you to spread your legs open, using the pommel to gently tip your chin up to him, or running it slowly along the inside of your thighs.

You would miss that cane.

You still argued sometimes—but not as often. You were accustomed to his haughtiness and felt less need to try and change it, and he knew you well enough to relax when the two of you were alone. He took your advice that life was not a competition... but only when it came to you, not to his career and public reputation.

He was still obsessed with proving his superiority to the world. Still obsessed with seeing Hannibal Lecter grow old and feeble inside a cell. Those edges were so integrally a part of him you could never smooth them out.

* * *

You were good for his book tour.

Though he never raised his voice or threw insults around, Chilton still had the journalist sitting in your living room on edge. She gripped the recording device harder, nails turning white. Flanked by imposing towers of leather-bound books, he stared her down like a shark, bragging about his psychiatric achievements and describing grizzly details of the Lecter case with a heartless detachment—he smirked when the more graphic parts made her squeamish.

Dr. Chilton was (contrary to his own opinion) not the best mind in the psychiatric field, but there was one thing he was the preeminent expert in, and that was leaving people with the impression that he was a callous douchebag who thought he was better than everyone else. Which was more or less accurate.

When you entered the room, his whole demeanor softened.

“Hey honey,” you poked your head in with a plate of cookies. “Sorry, I didn’t know you had that interview today. Should I come back later?”

“Nonsense, darling, come in.”

The haughty stare he’d been giving the journalist broke and turned to a warm gaze and a kind smile as he crossed the room to escort you in, his hand on the small of your back. You sat down on the sofa next to him, and set the plate of good-will-bribery cookies down on the coffee table between you and the journalist. She politely refused, at least until the recording was over, but instantly seemed more relaxed, loosing her death-vice on the recorder. You quietly leaned your head on Frederick’s shoulder and discreetly clasped his hand on the cushion between you through the rest of the interview, which he spent blushing and unable to maintain the coldness of his stare.

You brought out a side of him few were able to see. Whenever you made an appearance during his book promotions, the article published was always just a bit more favorable.

* * *

“Gotta go!” you called across the house, slinging a pack over your shoulders. Dawn was barely cresting the purple sky, and Frederick was barely awake. He didn’t even have his prosthetic maxilla in yet; he was only up to say goodbye. “I’m going to be in the field for ten hours straight today!” You thought about that for a moment, and groaned with anticipated exhaustion. 

“You have water?” 

“Yes, _mom._ ”

“You cannot blame me for worrying,” he smiled with some pride at his gallant adventurer. You were wild in ways he would never understand, and it terrified as much as thrilled him. He smoothed a few wrinkles out of your shirt—a rugged garment for outdoor wear—and said you looked presentable enough for what you were doing. You kissed him, and wished him luck with the book signing he was attending that day. 

He wandered into the kitchen to search for breakfast, when an idea occurred to him.

“Take some of my meal-replacement bars,” he offered, opening the pantry. He had the organic superfood detox variety that he was able to digest. 

“I already did, thanks!”

He sighed with annoyance. “I noticed. It looks like an animal went through the packaging.”

“You love me,” you grinned cheekily in the doorway.

He prowled up to you, eyes narrow, trapping you against the door. He growled. He wrapped his arms around you and buried his face in the crook of your neck, kissing you and sucking a small bruise just under your collar. Yeah, he loved you. You purred, arching your back so you were pressed more firmly against him, and breathed in his scent. If only you didn’t have to leave.

“Come home safe.”

* * *

Halloween was your favorite holiday. Perhaps it was gauche for one involved in investigating real murders, and real dead people, but then, that might have been what made it so appealing—on Halloween, all the blood was corn syrup, the skeletons danced to 80’s rock, and the serial killers wore their identities on their sleeves and carried plastic weapons. It had been your favorite holiday as a kid, and it still was.

“No.”

“Please?” you begged, drawing out the E. “It would be so awesome!”

“No.”

“But—”

“I am a bestselling author. An esteemed expert in my field. I will not be subjected to such an undignified, childish display.”

“But you would have the _best_ costume and _nobody would know!_ ”

He wasn’t sure how you talked him into it. It must have those adorable pleading eyes he could never resist, or the enticing appeal to his ego that it would be an extraordinary costume, certain to leave everyone guessing how the effect was done. Somehow, he was walking into a Halloween party as a zombie. Without his contact lens or prosthetic jaw.

He frowned. It was humiliating.

You were dressed as an apocalypse survivor with an infected bite, and were hamming it up, telling the other guests you were fine, _totally fine_ , with a shaky panic-edged voice and a tremor in your limbs. You had done an impressive job on the makeup, too, giving your complexion a sallow haze and reddened eyes. The bite itself was a gory masterpiece constructed from latex and tissue paper, with dark veins spider-webbing up your arm.

He didn’t have to ham it up. He only needed to walk in the room and Shrek and Fiona, Pennywise the clown, and a sexy velociraptor all gasped in horror at his face. How was that meant to make him feel?

“So cool!” someone said before he could turn on his heel and walk out of there. Words like, “There isn’t a contest, is there? I should have put in more effort,” and “did you hire a movie SFX artist? No fair,” started to get tossed around—including toward costume elements that you had designed and had nothing to do with his natural grotesqueness. Then they offered him a drink and moved on to the next impressive costumes and regular party chatter.

You were right. Nobody knew it was real, and while it stung to be stared at and called grisly—you would later apologize profusely for being too gung-ho and not thinking through what would happen—he had never imaged being able to have a normal conversation in public with his real face exposed. There was something daringly vulnerable about it. He had never imagined not being ashamed, but at least in this niche context, his old injury made him the leading man of the evening.

By the end of the night he got so into it, he was chasing you around snarling for your brains, and getting a kick out of scaring trick-or-treaters.

* * *

He took you to Paris for Valentine’s day. Last time it was Italy, and you strangely suspected he was touring the shadow of Hannibal Lecter as much as he was trying to impress you. You had suspected, that is, until you asked, and he rather bluntly admitted to it. He hadn’t expected you _not_ to notice by the time you got to Florence, although Venice had been purely about romance (he loved all those touristy gondola rides that he swore he hated and were just for your benefit).

Now that he finally had the chance to lavish his considerable means upon someone, he was throwing himself heart and soul into the holiday, and would not stop until he had spoiled you senseless. When he was single and accustomed to spending the day alone, he used to loathe February 14th—Valentine’s had seemed a cruel joke directed specifically at him. He couldn’t even spitefully ignore it by staying late at work, because the more perceptive inmates always took notice.

“You do not know hell,” he told you, “until a man convicted of raping his mother’s severed head taunts you about your lack of sex life.”

This year, he treated you to everything Paris had to offer: the Louvre, Notre Dame, an opera at Palais Garnier, a morning stroll through the gardens of Versailles, delicious bakeries, cafes, chocolate, and macrons. You insisted upon seeing the Catacombs, of course.

When you went to the Eiffel Tower and he showed up with roses and dinner reservations for sunset in its refined first-floor restaurant, your gut clenched. You were terrified he was going to propose. Of course he would make a grand gesture! You carefully inspected every champagne glass for hidden engagement rings, but found only bubbles. After dinner, when you ascended to the top of the tower to watch Paris light up at night, you knew that was when the proposal was coming.

But it didn’t. And you found yourself disappointed.

You had never talked about it, so there was no reason to assume it was something he wanted. It seemed far too soon to you, too, until it was snatched away and you realized that after three years together, you still couldn’t imagine wanting a life without him in it.

Arriving home at last, you breathed a sigh of relief into the still air. Paris was exciting and rich with history, but you were glad to be home in the peaceful familiarity of that snobbishly oversized house with its ridiculously spiraling staircases and its somewhat-less-fastidiously-pristine rooms, which now accommodated both of your things. All of the picture frames that once held impersonal stock photos displayed real snapshots of your lives together.

You weren’t even going to shower. You were so tired, you just wanted to rip all your clothes off and drop into bed. Frederick pulled his tie off. Hair frumpy from the long plane and taxi rides, his fingers worked to undo the top buttons of his shirt as he lumbered to the bath. He stopped at the door and turned back. You were taking a sip of water before leaving the cup on your nightstand.

“Marry me?” he said.


	9. The Goddamn Red Dragon

The smell was what hit you first. It entered your nostrils, filled your lungs like smoke, and shivered down your spine. The charcoal of burned flesh. If not for the bitter mingling of burned hair and gasoline, it might have smelled like steak on the grill. The thought turned your stomach. You gave yourself a moment to get used to it, to calm your breathing, before pulling back the curtain.

It was shocking. Horrifying beyond anything you could have prepared for.

He lay unmoving in the hydrotherapy tub in the ICU, burned over ninety percent of his body. You knew it would be bad, but you thought you had already cried your eyes dry when you were first told what had happened, and you stood in the hospital waiting room for hours begging every receptionist and nurse to tell you if he was going to live.

When they finally let you see him, you knew you had to be brave. Breaking down would only make it harder on him. _Whatever you do, don’t react._

“Hey there,” you greeted him cheerfully like nothing was wrong. _Don’t react._ Monitors beeped steadily, and a strong antiseptic smell overpowered the smell of burning. His eyes lifted sluggishly, unfocused. _Don’t..._ Your head swam, and you had to squeeze your eyes shut with all your might to force back the tears biting behind the lids. It felt like the air had been knocked from your lungs, and it was all you could do not to fall to your knees crying.

“Hard… to look at… huh?” he croaked after a while. You gasped at the sound of it, so pained that he had given up on forming proper words halfway through the question and ended it with a grunt. His voice was as charred as his flesh.

There was no skin left. None, except a few patches below the waist, cooling in the tub in an effort to preserve them. His hair was singed off down to the muscle, and the red remains of his scalp were blackened, cracked open and oozing in places. White teeth stood out in sharp contrast in his lipless mouth, like a skull. _His lips were gone._ Ripped off his face even before being burned alive by a serial killer who thought he was a fucking William Blake painting. A serial killer Will Graham had thrown in Frederick’s path, just to see what would happen.

_Little fly,  
Thy summer’s play  
My thoughtless hand  
Has brush’d away_

You opened your eyes, surrendering to the tears that poured out unimpeded.

“I don’t know what to say,” you breathed, trying to collect your thoughts. You stepped up to the edge of tub and looked him directly in the eye, making a point of showing that his appearance wasn’t why you had to close your eyes. He had bigger things to worry about than what he looked like right now, but you were sure he was going to be acutely insecure about it. With his contact lens removed, his one dead eye completed the living-corpse effect, but you weren’t repulsed. “I was trying to think of something to say to you—something I could say that would make things better. Because I don’t want to ask a stupid question like ‘how are you feeling?’… or make cliché promises like _it’s going to be OK_. I tried to think of what I would want someone to say to me if I was the one lying there, but there’s nothing. Nothing I can say will magically make anything better, and I...”

The urge to hold him overwhelmed you. You wanted so badly to kiss him, but you couldn’t even touch him—not an inch of his scorched body—without hurting him more. Choked sobs broke through the tight constriction of your throat, and you gave up trying to speak, kneeling instead by the side of the water tank, your head leaning against its cold metal walls. It was all you could do, the closest you could get.

The last thing you wanted was to make him have to comfort you, but that was exactly what you did; Chilton started whispering sweet consolations to you, though every syllable was an effort, and without lips to press together he had great difficulty forming many sounds, and could no longer pronounce the letters _b_ or _p_ at all. You struggled to make out the words, but you understood the meaning behind them.

You just wanted to touch him again, and he felt the same way.

“Put your hand near mine,” he suggested, slow and raspy.

Carefully, you placed your palm down on the smooth white rim of the tub, avoiding medical tubing and wires, next to his. His wrist was restrained in a soft bandage to keep his arm from sliding off the edge and to keep the IV needles in place.

With painful effort, he stretched his fingers out. Even moving an inch hurt, the skin crisp and easily broken, but he gently touched the back of your hand. He released his muscles and let his hand relax on top of yours. A sigh of relief puffed from his chest. It was exhausting, but worth it.

You still wore your engagement ring, but his had to be cut off of him. A nurse had handed it back to you in pieces, the gold warped from the heat.

Chilton was furious with his situation. He was furious with Will Graham—his initial diagnosis of intelligent psychopath seemingly more accurate by the day. He was furious with Hannibal Lecter, with Jack Crawford, and with himself. Every part of his body screamed in pain the drugs could barely dull. He was grateful for one thing, however.

He was glad Dolarhyde had taken him in his car, and not at home. The goddamned Red Dragon. Francis Dolarhyde tortured him and killed two of his best bodyguards, but his modus operandi was murdering whole families. If Chilton had considered the risk, he would have never agreed to that interview. It was supposed to be publicity for his newest book, _The Dragon Slayer_. He pictured the headline: “Hero psychiatrist once again aids in the capture of serial killer.” If anything had happened to you, he wouldn’t have survived. He wouldn’t have wanted to.

God, he wished he could touch you. Wished you could comfort him. Wished he could feel anything besides pain. Would he ever kiss you again? Would whatever they could reconstruct of his face be something you would ever want to kiss? You stood by him through so much, but he could never ask you to walk through this hell with him.

* * *

Two familiar voices spoke in hushed whispers outside the thin curtain. _No._ The hairs on the back of your neck bristled like an angry dog. Those were not the people you wanted to see right now.

“He’s trashed. You ought to get ready for this,” said the deeper of the voices, as if you couldn’t hear him.

Will Graham and Jack Crawford pulled back the curtain divider and entered the room, and you immediately leaped to your feet and rounded on them. You'd been holding in a scream since you saw Frederick burned, and now you unleashed it on them in full force.

“You bastards. _You fucking bastards!_ ”

Will’s eyes fell on Chilton, and regarded him with a disturbed, yet wholly unsurprised expression, like someone who set a mouse trap and now had to deal with the bloated carcass.

“Frederick, it’s Will Graham,” he said, ignoring you. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

He wasn’t.

“He knows who you are,” you hissed through bared teeth. You would have screamed at him, physically pushed him out of the room, but you heard Frederick rasping, tongue moving behind his teeth as he tried to talk, his eyes locked on Will. You stood aside and let him speak for himself.

“You… set me… up. You knew it… You put your hand on me in the picture… like a pet.”

Will translated his broken speech for Crawford, and asked if he saw anything in the Red Dragon’s lair.

A blind black woman.

“Reba,” Crawford said. “The Dragon said her name when he called Lecter.”

With a lead to follow, the pair turned to leave.

“That’s it? That’s all you came here for, huh? You get your answers? Was it worth it?” you laughed bitterly. “Why the hell didn’t you protect him?!” you roared at Crawford, snarling savagely. “You gave Will a SWAT team when both of them were in that fucking article! Why wasn’t anybody watching him?”

Crawford shifted uncomfortably, unable to show the guilt he deeply felt while there was still a killer to catch. “We believed that the Dragon would—”

“Yeah, you believed he’d target Will, right?” you interrupted. “Because that’s what _Will_ told you? You are at _best_ a criminally negligent idiot being led around by the nose by psychopaths, and at worst, you are complicit in enabling them!” The fierce tears streaming down your face warned him better than to argue. You turned your fury back to Will where it truly belonged. “ _You!_ Stay the hell away from us. If you come near him again, I swear I’ll—” you spat, but stopped your threat short. You wanted to rip him limb from limb. You did. But saying you’ll kill someone was more than empty words around people like this. And the truth was, you didn’t have that in you. Not like Will did.

So you let them walk out without taking any revenge, or even promising to.

As soon as the curtain swished shut behind them, you wanted to fall to your knees again, but your anger hadn’t yet burned itself out. You turned on Frederick. “ _Stop getting involved with them!_ You keep trying to swim with the sharks, but you’re _not_ a shark, Frederick—you’re chum on the water!” Your chest heaved with emotion and your voice was too hoarse to continue without a fresh round of tears.

Chilton wouldn’t dignify that analogy with a response, but grumpily turned his head away to stare at the opposite wall. At least you imagined it was grumpily—he was unable to cross his arms over his chest with annoyance, or leer haughtily through his brow which was singed to the bone, or curl his torn-off lips into a scowl, or even produce an offended growl from his raw throat, and yet you could see him doing all of it clearly in your head.

He was still your Frederick. He hadn’t changed. He never did. No matter what horrific punishment he suffered for his hubris, he would pick himself back up and continue to stick his nose where it didn’t belong until the fates knocked him down again. You admired that most about him—surviving the worst odds again and again, and keeping his ego intact. It was what first made you fall for him, all those years ago.

It never was pity at all, was it? It was always his strength that drew you in.

“I don’t… want you to get hurt again,” you explained, calmer, softer, your voice a trembling mess. “It’s a miracle you survived this, and I…” You wondered how much more could his body take before there was nothing left to recover—before he was nothing but a mass of scar tissue and empty space where bones and organs once were. But you couldn’t tell him that. He had to focus on healing now, not long-term outcomes. “I don’t want to lose you.”

He survived, but with massive trauma. It had to all add up. His blind eye, lost facial bones and teeth, missing organs, and now the majority of skin would be scar tissue and grafts. How many medications and risks of complications were stacking up? How many years were taken off his life? If he went septic before the grafts were completed he could he still die here in the ICU. If he made it out, he might still never move without pain again.

His maxillary prosthetic would get sore after wearing it for too long, but the sagging of his cheek and eyelid without it was also uncomfortable. It was difficult for him to reach things above his head because of the way stretching pulled at his abdominal scar. And those were small compared to this.

What would his life be _now?_

“You don’t have to stay… out of loyalty,” he wheezed, sensing the way your eyes drifted over his broken body.

“It’s alright,” you smiled through tears, the salt getting in your mouth, “I cleared my schedule. I’ve got nowhere else to be but here.”

“You know… what I mean…”

“Are you suggesting we call off the engagement because you can’t _fuck_ for awhile?”

He made an attempt at a laugh that sounded like choking, then fixed you with a desperate gaze. “This is… not what you signed up for...” He knew he would never be the man you had wanted to marry again. He couldn’t ask you to help him through a long recovery, to look at the nightmare he had become and pretend to still love him.

“How uncharacteristically selfless of you, Dr. Chilton,” you teased, “but I just told you I don’t want to lose you. Asshole.”

His one good eye searched your face through a layer of tears that clung to its surface, but you couldn’t tell if he was smiling or frowning.

There was so little left of his face that was recognizable, but around the gaping hole of teeth the cheeks were still Chilton’s cheeks, the shape of his nose still Chilton’s nose. His one good eye was still the color of water at Chesapeake Beach.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, so the only thing you should worry about is living long enough to make that happen. I’m never going to leave you, however bad things get. I love you, dummy. Always.”

Slowly, he released a breath he’d been holding since he was fished out of that fountain. The side of his mouth that always tugged up into a crooked smile when he was winning twitched. A contented, charred noise hummed in his throat. “You thought of something to say… to make it… a little better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
